At least 24 people were killed and 18 wounded on Sunday during an armed attack on a Protestant church in Pansy, a town in the province of Yagha in northeastern Burkina Faso.
The attack took place on Sunday morning when the service was taking place. There are reports that at least three people have also been kidnapped. The church was later set on fire and some shops in the area were looted.
According to the region’s governor, Colonel Salfo Kabore, speaking to the France Press news agency, a group of armed men “attacked the peaceful local population”, identifying people and separating them between residents and non-residents.
This incident occurred days after the kidnapping and subsequent execution, also in Yagba province, of a Protestant pastor and four members of his family.
Attacks against the Christian community are more and more frequent in this African country and even last January, Aid to the Church in Need echoed the disturbing words of some religious women who warned of the existence of “daily confrontations” with terrorist groups in northern Burkina Faso.
Two sisters, the current and former Superior General of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, described, in an interview with ACN, the situation of humanitarian chaos that is being experienced especially in northern Burkina Faso, where there is an extensive border with Mali and the Niger.
For Sisters Pauline and Maria-Bernardette, the incidents are constant with attacks by terrorist groups that send fear and chaos to the populations. In the northern region of Burkina Faso, the sisters “witness daily clashes” and, in some cases, as in the locality of Ban, “the terrorists were 4 kilometers from the convent”.
In view of the growing insecurity in Burkina Faso, these two sisters launched, through Aid to the Church in Need, an appeal to the international community thanking all for the material help that has been given to the Church in their country. “Faced with all these difficulties – say Sisters Pauline and Maria-Bernardette – Christians do not leave the churches, on the contrary … They pray even more.”
