June 5, 2018 By World Watch Monitor
A Christian pastor and three members of his family have been kidnapped in Burkina Faso’s north-eastern province of Soum, two weeks after the kidnapping of another Christian leader and his wife.
The circumstances of the kidnapping are not yet known, but Islamist militants are known to be active in the region.
The kidnapping of the two Christian clerics have created an atmosphere of anxiety among Christian communities in the land-locked Sahel nation, seen as a model of tolerance in a troubled region.
The country’s 20 million inhabitants have long enjoyed peaceful co-existence.
Until recently, attacks carried out by Islamist militants only targeted military personnel and civil servants in the region, leaving civilians generally untroubled.