Two members of Pakistan’s beleaguered Christian community were killed on Sunday in the country’s southwest when unknown gunmen opened fire on a small group that had just left a local church, police officials said.

The churchgoers were on their way home in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, when two men on a motorcycle began shooting at them, local police official Ataullah Shah told Reuters.

Eight wounded were taken to hospital and two people were pronounced dead.

Television pictures showed members of Quetta’s Christian community burning car and bicycle tyres while protesting the shooting.

At the hospital, people screamed and cried as the two bodies were brought in on a stretcher covered with white sheets.

Baluchistan, a region bordering Iran as well as Afghanistan, is plagued by violence by Sunni Islamist sectarian groups linked to the Taliban, al Qaeda and Islamic State. It also has an indigenous ethnic Baloch insurgency fighting the central government.

Islamic State has created a branch in Pakistan and Afghanistan in recent years mostly by recruiting among established militants. Its followers have claimed some of Pakistan’s most deadly recent attacks.

This month four members of a Christian family were gunned down in Quetta a day after Easter, in what police officials called a “targeted attack”.

In December two suicide bombers stormed a packed church in southwestern Pakistan, killing at least 10 people and wounding up to 56. Islamic State claimed both attacks.

Rome’s ancient Colosseum was lit in red for an evening in February in solidarity with persecuted Christians, particularly Asia Bibi, a Catholic woman who has been living on death row in Pakistan since 2010, when she was condemned for allegedly making derogatory remarks about Islam.

]]> 7249 https://www.faith-matters.org/cctv-footage-shows-gunmen-attacking-pakistan-church/ Mon, 18 Dec 2017 02:28:24 +0000 https://www.faith-matters.org/?p=7008

Two suicide bombers attacked a packed Christian church in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province, in south-western Pakistan on Sunday (December 17), killing at least nine people and wounding up to 56, officials said.

CCTV footage released by the police showed the attackers, both carrying guns, at the church gates. One climbed over the gate and let the other one into the compound. The footage showed people sitting at tables outside the church running from the scene.

Police guards stationed at the church entrance and on its roof killed one of the bombers but the second attacker detonated his explosives-filled vest outside the prayer hall just after Sunday services began, said Sarfraz Bugti, the provincial home minister.

Baluchistan police chief Moazzam Jah said there were nearly 400 worshippers in the church for the pre-Christmas service. The death toll could have been much higher if the gunmen had forced their way into the sanctuary, he said.

Jah said the venue – Bethel Memorial Methodist Church – was on high alert as Christian places of worship are often targeted by Islamist extremists over the Christmas season.

Islamic State claimed the attack, the group’s Amaq news agency said in an online statement, without providing any evidence for its claim.

]]> 7008 https://www.faith-matters.org/twenty-dead-more-than-100-wounded-in-pakistan-police-academy-attack/ Tue, 25 Oct 2016 00:04:08 +0000 https://faith-matters.org/?p=6116

Gunmen stormed a Pakistani police training academy in the southwestern city of Quetta late on Monday night, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 100, officials said.

Some 200 trainees are stationed at the facility, officials said, and some had been taken hostage.

Mir Sarfaraz Bugti, home minister of Baluchistan province, of which Quetta is the capital, confirmed early on Tuesday that five to six gunmen had attacked a dormitory inside the training facility while cadets rested and slept.

“So far there are at least twenty dead and over a one hundred injured,” Bugti told media. “Among the injured is an army captain.”