Religious groups, houses of worship frequent targets of attack in 2019

On Dec. 1, 2019, a band of assailants opened fire on worshippers at a small-town Protestant church in Burkina Faso, an impoverished West African country where the Christian minority is increasingly a target of attacks. 

The victims included the pastor and several teenage boys. Regional authorities attributed the attack to “unidentified armed men” who, according to witnesses, got away on motorcycles.

Attacks on places of worship occurred with relentless frequency in 2019. Hundreds of worshippers and many clergy were killed in the attacks, which targeted several religious groups.

A two-week span in January 2019 illustrated the scope of this somber phenomenon. In Thailand, a group of separatist insurgents attacked a Buddhist temple, killing the abbot and one of his fellow monks. In the Philippines, two suicide attackers detonated bombs during Mass in a Roman Catholic cathedral on the largely Muslim island of Jolo, killing 23 and wounding about 100. Three days later, an attacker hurled a grenade into a mosque in a nearby city, killing two Muslim religion teachers.

On Easter — April 21 — bombs shattered the celebratory services at two Catholic churches and a Protestant church in Sri Lanka. Other targets, in coordinated suicide attacks by local militants, included three luxury hotels. But Christian worshippers at the three churches — including dozens of children — accounted for a large majority of the roughly 260 people killed.

Six days after Easter, a gunman opened fire inside a synagogue in Poway, California, as worshippers celebrated the last day of Passover. A 60-year-old woman was killed; an 8-year-old girl and two men, including the Chabad of Poway’s rabbi, were wounded.

In October more than 60 people were killed in a bombing during Friday prayers at a mosque in the village of Jodari in eastern Afghanistan. 

On December 28, five people were stabbed as they celebrated Hanukkah in an Orthodox Jewish community north of New York City. The next day a gunman killed two people at a Texas church (see story here). (Associated Press, TAB)