LAGOS, Nigeria, April 12 (UPI) -- Angry mobs in Nigeria lynched 12 people to death Thursday after accusing them of making their genital organs disappear, the British Broadcasting Crop. reported.
The lynching began earlier this week during the annual convention of the evangelical sect, Brotherhood of the Cross, in the southwestern town of Ilesa.
While the sect members were on a house-to-house preaching mission, someone raised an alarm accusing the evangelists of making his penis had disappear.
An angry mob descended on the visiting evangelists and burnt eight of them to death. Two buses and a car were also set ablaze.
Following the violence, authorities ordered police to patrol the area, however, four additional evangelists were killed.
Police rescued six other victims from the hands of angry mobs, including a woman who was set free after a frenzied crowd had put a tire around her neck and was about to set her ablaze.
All the victims were first accused of making people's genital organs disappear before being hacked to death.
Police commissioner Ganiu Dawodu told BBC that mob killings "swept through six towns in the southwestern state of Osun" before authorities were able to control violence.
''We are terribly worried about the mass hysteria leading to such mob actions,'' Dawodu said.
The local police have since arrested two suspects including the man who raised the false alarm about his disappearing genitals.
Officials said the hysteria generated by the incidents is connected to similar accusations in Oyo state where at least six people were burnt to death last month.
The police and the state governor in Osun appeared on local television and radio, appealing to the public not to take the law into their own hands.
They also appealed to religious leaders and traditional rulers to ask their followers not to take part in the violence.