Several gunman burst into a Catholic Church Sunday morning in north-central Burkina Faso, killing six, including the church’s priest as he celebrated Mass.
The gunman then burned the church, the BBC reports, as well as nearby shops and stands, and a government health office.
“The attackers opened fire on the faithful at the beginning of Mass in the village of Dablo, 90 km from Kaya,” France24 radio reported early Sunday morning, adding that the group of gunman may have included as many as “twenty to thirty men.”
“Towards 9:00am, during mass, armed individuals burst into the Catholic Church,” the mayor of Dablo, Ousmane Zongo, told international press in a statement. “They started firing as the congregation tried to flee.”
“They burned down the church, then shops and a small restaurant before going to the health centre where they searched the premises and set fire to the head nurse’s vehicle,” Zongo added. “The city is filled with panic. People are holed up at home. Shops and stores are closed. It’s practically a ghost town.”
The BBC reports that this is the fourth such attack on a Christian church in Burkina Faso in less than a month, and France 24 adds that terror attacks within the African nation have been on a dramatic rise in 2019, due in part to the growing influence of radical Islam, including “jihadist groups such as Ansarul Islam, the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM) and the Islamic State in the Great Sahara (EIGS).”
Sunday morning’s attack is also the second such attack on a Catholic church in less than two weeks.
The terror groups have been operating within the country since around 2015, but the deadly violence began to spike recently, leaving dozens dead in a series of attacks within the country, many on Christians.
Mothers day worshipers?
Funny, there wasn’t any reporting of it on the news…