At least 15 people including a priest were killed and scores wounded in Central African Republic’s capital Bangui on May 1 when unidentified gunmen attacked a church, a morgue official and rights groups said.
The attack occurred on the border of the predominantly Muslim PK 5 neighbourhood where 21 people were killed when a joint mission by U.N. peacekeepers and local security forces to disarm criminal gangs descended into open fighting. Nine dead bodies were taken to Bangui’s Community Hospital, a morgue official said, while aid agency Doctors Without Borders said six people had died and 60 were wounded at other hospitals where it operates.
It is not clear if they were all killed in the church attack itself or during skirmishes that occurred afterwards in the surrounding area. Retaliation killings followed by “anti-balaka” armed groups, drawn largely from Christian communities, and Muslim “self-defence” groups sprang up in PK 5, claiming to protect the Muslim civilians concentrated there against efforts to drive them out.
