The president of the West African nation of Burkina Faso has confirmed that 14 people were killed in an attack on a Protestant church in the country’s east.
Going on Twitter, President Roch Marc Christian Kabore said Sunday that he condemned “the barbaric attack” in the town of Hantoukoura. He said several people also were wounded.
Kabore offered his “deepest condolences to the bereaved families and wish a speedy recovery to the wounded.”
Islamic extremists have been active in Burkina Faso since 2015. Jihadists have attacked police stations and churches across the country’s north but also recently have struck in the east.
In October, gunmen generally believed to be Islamic extremists attacked a convoy carrying employees of a mining company in that region, killing at least 37 people.
The US State Department warns against travel in most of Burkina Faso, stating that terrorists may attack places of worship and other targets.
CT reported on a wave of similar church attacks in April and May.
“It’s not only the church … that has been attacked; all the values of tolerance, forgiveness, and love that have always led our country have been hurt,” said Henri Yé, president of the Federation of Evangelical Churches and Missions in Burkina Faso, in an April 30 statement after the first attack. “The freedom of worship consecrated by our fundamental law [the Constitution] has been flouted.”
“In the face of blind hatred, let us ask God to give us the strength to spread love, which makes us the children of God,” stated Yé in April. “The unity of the body of Christ and of the whole nation must be preserved at all costs.”
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