Weeks after Kenyan priest was brutally murdered in South Sudan,another priest who was working in Cameroon has been killed by soldiers.
Father Cosmas Omboto Ondari was serving as the Parochial Vicar of the St Martin of Tours Parish in Kembong when he was shot twice yesterday inside a church .
Circumstances surrounding the motive of his shooting are unclear since there was no fight.
“A Kenyan priest was shot dead in Kembong yesterday,” one source said adding that ,”there was no fighting, he was in the church in Kembong when he was killed,” another official said in Buea, capital of the Southwest.
However the church suggested the priest may have been killed by the military.
“There are no ‘Amba Boys’ in Kembong at this moment but the Cameroonian army is there,” one source said, referring to armed separatists fighting for an independent state called Ambazonia.
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Omboto has been serving in the said country since March 2017 after he was ordained. He is now the second priest to be killed as a member of Mill Hill Missionaries.
Fr. Omboto was ordained in on March 26 in Kisii by Bishop Joseph Mairura where he was immediately appointed to the diocese of Mafe, in Cameroon.
Its reported that a group of religious Sisters were kidnapped and released early November by guerrillas, Northwest of Cameroon.
The UN recently warned of worsening violence in the country. The conflict has displaced more than 437,000 people, according to UN data released in October.
Fr Ondari’s death has shone the light on the rising number of religious leaders killed amid a conflict that has lasted two-years and gripped the two English-speaking regions of Cameroon.
The priest had been working with people displaced by the conflict.
At least 400 “ordinary people” and more than 175 members of the security forces have been killed, according to statistics by local and international groups that have been documenting abuses in the escalating violence. They include Amnesty International.
More than 300,000 people have fled the violence and now live from hand-to-mouth, in forests and across the border into Nigeria, where they are exposed to various dangers.