Nine dead after church attack in C-African Republic

BANGUI: At least nine people including a priest were killed and dozens wounded in Central African Republic´s capital Bangui when unidentified gunmen attacked a church, a morgue official and witnesses said.

Notre Dame de Fatima church was attacked with gunfire and grenades during a morning service, witnesses said, forcing trapped church-goers to escape through a hole made in the church wall by police.

It was not clear if all the people taken to the Community Hospital were killed in the church attack itself.“Filled with panic, some Christians began to flee until bullets and grenades begin to fall in the parish grounds, trapping those who remained in the compound,” church priest Moses Aliou told Reuters.

Another priest named Albert Toungoumale Baba was shot dead during the attack, said the Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Bangui, Walter Brad Mazangue.An angry crowd of about a thousand people gathered as his body was carried to the presidential palace in protest, a Reuters witness said.

The identity of the gunmen was not known but the attack occurred on the border of the predominantly Muslim PK 5 neighbourhood where 21 people were killed last month when a joint mission by U N peacekeepers and local security forces to disarm criminal gangs descended into open fighting.Angry demonstrators, who blamed UN soldiers for firing on residents protesting against the operation, carried the bodies of the dead to MINUSCA´s gates.