Street clashes, election protests in Congo kill at least 44: KINSHASA, Congo – More than 44 people have been killed in Congo in two days of street clashes between security forces and protesters angered over a delayed presidential election, a senior Human Rights Watch researcher said Tuesday.
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“Deeply distressed upon receiving the sad news of the assassination of Reverends Alejo Nabor Jimenez Juarez and Jose Alfredo Suarez de la Cruz…the Holy Father expresses his sincerest condolences”, read the telegram, sent September 20. One priest had been shot nine times and both bodies were found miles from where they were last seen in the Veracruz city of Poza Rica on Sunday, he said.
The two priests were found dead Monday, hours after they were taken away from their church in the Veracruz city of Poza Rica.
“In these moments of pain, impotence and tragedy provoked by violence, we raise our prayers to the heavens for the eternal rest of our brothers and implore to the Lord the conversion of the aggressors”. He was found on Monday and put under police protection.
“We hope the authorities will clear up these incidents and apply justice against those responsible”, the conference said in statement. But it’s unclear why the Catholic priests were targeted.
It says Veracruz, Guerrero and Mexico states are the most unsafe. He did not say how many attackers there were or name the identified suspect. Two other priests remain missing.
Criminal gangs and various paramilitary groups exercise essentially unchallenged authority over some neighborhoods in Mexico, and even entire regions of the country.
In another part of Guerrero, the state prosecutor’s office said members of a drug cartel had freed six employees of a gold and silver mining plant who were kidnapped.
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The priests were abducted by gunmen on Sunday from the church in Poza Rica, in the crime-plagued state of Veracruz, said Father Jose Alberto Guerrero, a local spokesman for the bishops’ conference in Teziutlan, Puebla state, where the victims were based. They had spent several days captive in the hills before they were let go over the weekend.
