Gunmen kill four at Catholic parade in Burkina Faso

OUAGADOUGOU: Gunmen killed four Catholics in a religious procession in north Burkina Faso a day after a priest and five parishioners were murdered at mass, church officials said on Tuesday.The parade with a statue of the Virgin Mary was moving through the town of Ouahigouya on Monday when "a group of terrorists intercepted the procession, killing four worshippers and burning the statue," said a spokesman for the Ouagadougou Cathedral.According to the Burkina Faso news agency AIB, the assailants stopped the procession. "They let the minors go, executed four adults, and destroyed the statue," it quoted a local person as saying.Paul Ouedraogo, president of the Episcopal Conference of Burkina Faso and Niger, told a meeting of bishops in the capital Ouagadougou the attack had claimed four lives. The killings came a day after a group of 20-30 armed men, according to witnesses, burst into the Catholic church in Dablo, also in the Nord Region of Burkina Faso, shooting dead five parishioners and their priest. The attackers set fire to the church, several shops and a small cafe before heading to the health centre, which they looted, burning the chief nurse’s vehicle.Two days earlier, French special forces had freed four foreign hostages in Burkina Faso during an overnight raid that cost the lives of two soldiers. Two weeks ago, there was a similar attack against a Protestant church in Silgadji, also in the north, when gunmen on motorbikes killed a pastor and five worshippers.

from The News International - World http://bit.ly/2HolIed