Ouagadougou
Gunmen have killed 24 people and wounded 18 in an attack on a Protestant church in a village in northern Burkina Faso, the regional governor said Monday.
A group of “armed terrorists” burst into the village of Pansi, in Yagha province “and attacked the peaceful local population after having identified them and separated them from non-residents”, Colonel Salfo Kabore said in a statement sent to AFP.
The assault occurred on Sunday during a weekly service, security officials said.
“The provisional toll is 24 killed, including the pastor… 18 wounded and individuals who were kidnapped,” Kabore said.
A resident of the nearby town of Sebba said Pansi villagers had fled there for safety.
Meanwhile, a massacre in an anglophone region f Cameroon left up to 22 villagers dead including 14 children, the UN said Sunday, with an opposition party blaming the killings on the army.
Armed men carried out the bloodshed on Friday in the village of Ntumbo in the Northwest region, James Nunan, a local official of humanitarian coordination agency OCHA, told AFP.
“Up to 22 civilians were killed, including a pregnant woman and several children,” Nunan said, adding that 14 children—including nine under age five—were among the dead.
Eleven of the children were girls, said Nunan, head of OCHA’s office for the Northwest and Southwest regions, which are home to the West African country’s large English-speaking minority. Separatists in the regions have been fighting the central government for three years. The Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon, one of the country’s two main opposition parties, issued a statement saying: “The dictatorial regime (and) the supreme head of the security and defence forces are chiefly responsible for these crimes.”
A key figure in the separatist movement, lawyer Agbor Mballa, in a Facebook post also accused “state defence forces” of carrying out the killings.—APP
