Gunmen kill six during Catholic mass in Burkina Faso
Ouagadougou: Gunmen killed a priest and five parishioners during mass Sunday in an attack on a Catholic church in Dablo, northern Burkina Faso, security sources and a local official said.
"Towards 9:00 am, during mass, armed individuals burst into the Catholic church," the mayor of Dablo, Ousmane Zongo, told AFP. "They started firing as the congregation tried to flee."
The attackers -- between 20 and 30 according to a security source -- managed to trap some of the worshippers, Zongo added.
"They killed five of them. The priest, who was celebrating mass, was also killed, bringing the number of dead to six."
The gunmen then set fire to the church, several shops and a small cafe before heading to the local health centre, which they looted, burning the chief nurse's vehicle.
"There is an atmosphere of panic in the town," said Zongo.
"People are holed up in their homes, nothing is going on. The shops and stores are closed. It's practically a ghost town," he added.
Security reinforcements were sent from Barsalogho, about 45 kilometres south of Dablo, and were combing the area, a security source told AFP. Dablo is located in the northern province of Sanmatenga.
The attack came two days after French special forces freed four foreign hostages in the north of the country in an overnight raid that cost the lives of two soldiers.
The operation was ordered to free French hostages Patrick Picque and Laurent Lassimouillas who disappeared while on holiday in the remote Pendjari National Park in Benin on May 1.
The team also found two other female captives, an American woman and a South Korean.
Sunday's church strike came two weeks after a similar attack against a Protestant church in Silgadji, also in the north, when gunmen on motorbikes killed a pastor and five worshippers.
Burkina Faso has suffered from increasingly frequent and deadly attacks attributed to a number of jihadist groups, including the Ansarul Islam group, the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM) and Islamic State in the Greater Sahara.
The raids began in 2015 in the north before targeting the capital Ouagadougou and other regions, notably in the east. Nearly 400 people have been killed since 2015 -- mainly in hit-and-run raids -- according to an AFP tally.
Jihadist groups target both Muslim and Christian clerics, mainly in the north.
According to security sources, the jihadists do not consider certain Muslim clerics sufficiently radical and sometimes accuse them of having collaborated with the authorities.
Religious leaders are not the only people targeted by the extremists. Last month, jihadists attacked a village school in Maitaougou, in the eastern province of Koulpelogo, killing five teachers and a municipal worker.
Former colonial ruler France has deployed 4,500 troops in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad in a mission codenamed Barkhane to help local forces flush out jihadist groups.
Around 4.3 million people have been driven from their homes in the worsening violence that has engulfed the entire Sahel region, including one million over the past year, according to UN humanitarian officials.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned Sunday's attack and offered condolences as he recalled "the sanctity of all places of worship", according to a UN spokesman.
Guterres "urges all citizens of Burkina Faso to stand firmly with one another across communities and not to succumb to efforts to sow discord and breed further violence.
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After arriving from Delhi, Shinde heads to his native village; Mahayuti meet likely on Sun
Mumbai(PTI): Outgoing Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, who returned to Mumbai from New Delhi on Friday morning, is travelling to his native village in Satara district amid continuing suspense over his successor a week after the assembly poll results.
Shinde had told reporters in New Delhi on late Thursday night that the next meeting of the Mahayuti alliance on government formation will be held in Mumbai on Friday.
However, the caretaker CM, who heads the Shiv Sena, is travelling to his native village Dare in Satara district in western Maharashtra and the meeting is now expected to take place on Sunday, the sources said.
The Shiv Sena leader has repeatedly said he would not be an obstacle in the government formation and abide by the decisions taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah on the next chief minister.
Different viewpoints are emerging in the Shiv Sena over Shinde's place in the next government to be headed by the BJP, the biggest constituent in the Mahayuti, which posted a thumping win in the just-held assembly polls.
Many leaders in the Shiv Sena are asking Shinde to accept deputy CM's post if offered by the BJP. However, another section feels it wouldn't be right for him to accept No. 2 position after serving as CM for more than two-and-a-half years, the sources said.
"The government formation process will start after the BJP announces its legislature party leader," they said.
During his Delhi trip, Shinde had met Shah and discussed formation of the next government in the state. His deputies in the outgoing state cabinet Devendra Fadnavis (BJP) and Ajit Pawar (NCP) had also met the senior BJP leader.
Talking to reporters in the national capital, Shinde called the discussion “good and positive”.
Shinde, Fadnavis and Pawar had also met BJP president J P Nadda.
