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Sunday, 1 July 2012
Kenya police: church attacks kill 15, wound 40
 NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Gunmen killed two policemen guarding a church, snatched their rifles and then opened fire on the congregation from inside and out on Sunday, killing 15 people and wounding 40, security officials said. Two gunmen entered the simple wooden church in the city of Garissa at around 10:15 a.m. Sunday, while two others waited outside, police commander Philip Ndolo said. When the congregation fled the attack inside, they ran straight into another hail of bullets from gunmen outside, he said. At least one grenade was detonated in the attack. Overturned wooden benches littered the church afterward. A victim wearing a simple blue dress lay on the sandy earth outside. Witnesses reported seeing the four gunmen flee in dark blue outfits and masks. "We were deep in prayers preparing to give our offerings," said a visibly shaken David Mwange, a churchgoer. "We first had a loud bang from outside which we mistook to be coming from the rooftops. We then had gun shots which made us to lie down. Within no time we had gunshots all over. Everybody was shouting and wailing in pain." The bloodiest of the two attacks came against the African Inland Church in Garissa, a city some 195 kilometers (120 miles) west of the Somali border. Ndolo said 15 people were killed and at least 40 wounded. A grenade attack against a second church in Garissa wounded three people. Garissa Mayor Ismail Garat called the church assault "evil." The police were guarding the church because of the increasingly dangerous security situation near the border with Somalia and because Somalia's Islamist militants have made Christian churches a common target. Such a heinous attack could be a copycat strategy from Boko Haram, the group of Islamist militants in Nigeria that has made gruesome, deadly attacks against Christian churches one of their hallmarks. According to Capital FM Kenya the death toll is now 17. According to the Sky News report on TV 5 minutes ago al Shabaab have claimed responsibility 'with delight'. Posted on 07/01/2012 9:19 AM by Esmerelda Weatherwax
Comments
2 Jul 2012
 Christina McIntosh
Quite a few years ago now - I think sometime during the 1990s - there was a very, very similar sort of attack upon a church in Pakistan. Not a church out in the badlands, but a church in a large-ish city, with a significant expat component to the congregation. I am now beginning to wonder when, not if, the Ummah will feel itself strong enough to get away with a full-on attack, like the attacks in Nigeria and Kenya (both of which are officially secular states, with very large Christian populations; in Kenya non-Muslims are well and truly in the majority), and like that attack in Pakistan, upon a worshipping Christian congregation within the western world. There have already been cases of gangs of Muslim teenage thugs barging into a congregation in France, during the service, and throwing handfuls of stones at the little old ladies. During the so-called 'Cronulla riots' in Sydney in 2004, Muslim gangs vandalised churches (not during service time) and a carload of Muslims fired rifles at the exterior of a church during a Christmas nativity play; Muslims have vandalised the exterior of churches in the UK, and beaten up vicars on church grounds; certain Muslim websites specifically threatened emigre Coptic congregations, in Australia and elsewhere, not long ago, necessitating high-level security measures; and besides the targeting of Christians, there is the ongoing Mohammedan campaign of vandalism and intimidation against the Shri Mandir Hindu temple (and its priest, who lives next door with his family), in now-heavily-Islamified Auburn, in Sydney, Australia: including the peppering of the temple with gunshots on at least one occasion. At what point are the Muslims going to feel bold enough to do to a non-Muslim religious gathering within the West - whether Jewish, Christian, Hindu or Buddhist - what they have just done in Kenya and in Nigeria? At what point is a car bomb going to park outside some humble suburban church or synagogue or temple in the suburbs of Sydney, or Melbourne, or London, or New York; when will the suicide murder-'martyr' gatecrash the Christmas mass, or the grenades be hurled and the gang of masked Mohammedan mobsters open fire? It is not 'if' but 'when', so long as our foolish Authorities continue to permit more and more Muslims to enter and settle within our countries. The bigger the Ummah is in any given locality, the stronger it feels and the more aggressive and violent it becomes. |