African Muslim shot dead day after pope’s visit

Pope Francis talks to journalists during a press conference he held aboard the flight on the way back to Italy, Monday, Nov. 30, 2015. Pope Francis traveled to Africa for a six-day visit that took him to Kenya, Uganda and the Central African Republic. AP

BANGUI, Central African Republic — A Muslim man was shot dead Tuesday in a besieged Muslim district of divided Central African Republic, a day after Pope Francis appealed for an end to violence between Christians and Muslims.

Issouf Djibril, who heads the traders’ association in the PK5 district in the capital, Bangui, said the man was outside the mosque visited Monday by the pontiff when “criminals pulled out their guns, shot at him and he died.”

An AFP reporter later saw the body.

Several residents said the killers were posted close by on the other side of a canal separating the flashpoint Muslim neighborhood from Christian districts.

Bangui’s Catholic Archbishop Dieudonne Nzapalainga went to the area to offer his support to Muslim leaders, appealing to residents not to cave into “provocations by the enemies of peace” and resort to revenge killings.

Francis had said Monday that Christians and Muslims were “brothers” and urged them to reject hatred and violence as he visited the PK5 mosque during the last and most dangerous leg of a three-nation tour of Africa, his first to the continent.

After two years of violence that has sent tens of thousands fleeing their homes, crowds of thousands of people had gathered at the roadside, cheering as the pope mobile drove down the red dirt roads.

“Christians and Muslims are brothers and sisters,” Francis said after meeting Muslim leaders at the Koudoukou mosque, where tensions remain high.

“Together, we must say no to hatred, to revenge and to violence, particularly that violence which is perpetrated in the name of a religion or of God himself,” he said.

Francis’ message of peace and reconciliation appeared to have made a powerful impression, with a group of Muslims turning up to join tens of thousands watching a papal mass at the capital’s Barthelemy Boganda stadium.

As they pushed through the crowd in an area where Muslims usually do not dare to venture, people cheered and applauded, shouting: “It’s over” in reference to the intercommunal hatred that has blighted the country since a 2013 coup sparked a cycle of revenge attacks.

“We thought the whole world had abandoned us, but not him. He loves us Muslims too. I’m very happy,” said Idi Bohari, an elderly man.