• Terrorist attack in Burkina Faso, also an American among the more than 20 victims
  • Burkina Faso, Al-Qaeda attacks: at least 29 dead. The jihadists: "Revenge against France"

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13 May 2019Cristians still under attack and targeted by jihadists who chose Sunday again to sow terror and massacre the faithful during mass. On the day when the churches were reopened in Sri Lanka after the Easter massacres, in Burkina Faso a group of terrorists massacred a priest and five faithful during the morning service and then set fire to the building.

It was 9 o'clock and the mass had just begun in the parish of Blessed Isidore Bakania in Dablo, in the north of the country, when a commando of 20 jihadists, arrived on a motorcycle, surrounded the church. The story of the attack as local sources is reported is chilling. The goal, the sources explain, was the Burkinabe priest, Abbé SiméonYampa, 34, in charge of interreligious dialogue in his diocese: when he tried to escape, the terrorists chased him and shot him. Then, having returned to the church, they laid the faithful down on the ground, chose five of them and shot them too. Cold, without pity. The terrorists, said the mayor of Dablo, Ousmane Zongo, "set fire to the church, set fire to shops and a bar, and then set up a clinic and set it on fire as well". The city has fallen into a panic and people have barricaded themselves in the house while commercial activities have closed down. From the city of Barsalogho, 45 kilometers away, military personnel were sent who carried out round-ups all day.

The attack comes two days after the release by French special forces, still in the north of the country, of four hostages kidnapped on May 1st in Benin. A blitz during which two French officers were killed. On 29 April, Islamic terrorism struck another church, again on Sunday and at the end of the service, killing a Protestant pastor along with five faithful in Silgadji, in the province of Soum. The attackers had then fled on their motorcycles to Mali, whose border is only a hundred kilometers away. Since 2014, France has deployed 4,500 soldiers in the Sahel area, in the framework of the anti-jihadist operation Barkhane, in collaboration with the G5 Sahel countries (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger), but without coming to head the activity of organizations such as Ansaroul Islam, the Islamic State of the great Sahara, or the Support Group for Islam and the Muslims that since 2015, in Burkina Faso alone, have caused at least 350 deaths.

And in Sri Lanka, despite the green light for the resumption of Sunday liturgies and the announcement by President Maithri pala Sirisena that he was arrested, 99% of the suspects linked to the Easter suicide bombings that caused 258 deaths, the alarm terrorism is still high. Military and police forces armed with assault rifles patrol the streets leading to the churches and are on guard outside the buildings. Anyone who enters is required to show identification documents and is searched. Parking is prohibited near the churches and officials have asked the faithful to bring only minimal baggage with them. The Catholic schools of the capital Colombo are still closed and will reopen on May 14, while on the 16th there will be a large outdoor mass in Negombo, the scene of the bloodiest attack: only in the church of San Sebastiano did they die on Easter Sunday over 100 people.

Pope: sorrow for attack church, pray for victims
"The Holy Father has learned with pain the news of the attack on the church in Dablo, in Burkina Faso. Pray for the victims, for their families and for the whole Christian community of the country". Thus in a tweet the director of the Vatican press office, Alessandro Gisotti.