At least eight people have been killed and six churches attacked in Niger amid fresh protests against French magazine Charlie Hebdo’s cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
Protests began outside Niamey’s grand mosque and reportedly spread to other parts of the country, a day after five were killed in Niger’s second city.
Last week in France, Islamist gunmen killed 12 people at Charlie Hebdo’s offices.
The cover of the magazine’s latest edition, published after the attack, featured a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad weeping while holding a sign saying “I am Charlie”.
Pastor Zakaria Jadi, whose church was burnt down in the capital Niamey, said he was in a meeting with church elders when he heard of the attacks.
“I just rushed and told my colleagues in the church to take away their families from the place,” he told the BBC World Service. “I took my family to take them out from the place. When I came back I just discovered that everything has gone. There’s nothing in my house and also in the church.”
Niger’s President, Mahamadou Issoufou, was one of six African heads of state to attend a unity march in Paris after the attacks against Charlie Hebdo.
“Those who loot these places of worship, who desecrate them and kill their Christian compatriots… have understood nothing of Islam,” he said after Saturday’s violence. CLICK TO READ MORE
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @Civilrightsint. FIND US ON FACEBOOK/Civil Rights International AS WELL AS FACEBOOK/Say No 2 Homosexuals
