Families of the dead from last Sunday’s church massacre in Nigeria are suffering grief and trauma in the aftermath of the horrific terrorist attack.

One woman, Theresa Ogbu, took two of her five children to mass on Sunday to celebrate Pentecost, a joyful occasion for a devout Catholic, but the boys came home without a mother.

Ogbu, 51, was shot in the head as she tried to escape from St Francis Catholic Church in Owo, Nigeria, where the congregation came under attack from unknown assailants firing guns and hurling explosives.

“I miss my mother so much,” said Victor Ogbu, 13. He and his brother escaped unharmed, only to discover later that their mother lay dead in a pool of blood in a church aisle.

Inside the church, streaks of blood on the floors and walls, broken furniture, shards of glass, plaster debris and abandoned shoes testified to the violence of the attack.

At the family home, Benedict Ogbu was grieving for his wife and wondering how he was going to face life as a single father of five.

“It is just like somebody have two hands and they cut one hand,” he said. “Something that the two hands is carrying, you try to use one hand to carry it. In fact it is very heavy.”