ROME — Armed jihadists slaughtered at least 15 Christians during Sunday morning worship in a Burkina Faso village church, Vatican News reported.
The Vatican described the violence as a “terrorist attack” that left 12 of the Catholic faithful dead at the scene, while three others died later from their wounds. Two more are in the hospital being treated for their injuries.
The assault took place in Essakane village in the country’s North-Eastern Oudalan province and was “the latest in a long string of atrocities committed by Islamist terrorist groups linked to the so-called Islamic State and al-Qaeda,” the Vatican said.
Jihadist terrorism in the vast Sahel region — which also includes Mali and Niger — has increased “by over 2,000 percent in the last 16 years,” the report added.
Togolese are seen in their daily lives in Lome, Togo on October 20, 2021. The Republic of Togo, located in West Africa, is one of the smallest countries of Africa with about 8 million people and 57 thousand square kilometers. It borders Burkina Faso to the north, Benin to the east, and Ghana to the west. (Halil Sagirkaya/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
In a 2023 interview, Bishop Birfuoré, chairman of the Joint Bishops’ Conference of Burkina Faso and Niger, said that half of the territory is controlled by jihadist groups that want to impose Islam on the whole country.
“The terrorists want to eradicate this society and all who do not profess the same brand of Islam, including Muslims, which means that the terrorism is now aimed at society as a whole,” the bishop said.
“The consequences of this wave of terrorism over the past seven years have been terrible,” he added. “From a pastoral point of view, we can no longer move around as we did before.”
“Our scope of action is much smaller, because the terrorists occupy two thirds of the territory of the Sahel,” he said.
