Kenyan Mill Hill Father Cosmas Omboto Ondari, parochial vicar of St. Martin of Tours Parish in Kembong, Cameroon, was killed Nov. 21 outside his church. Photo: CNS A Kenyan priest serving in Cameroon has been shot and killed by soldiers.
Fr Cosmas Omboto Ondari was shot dead in Manyu, Cameroon, just days after the murder of another Kenyan priest, Jesuit Fr Victor-Luke Odhiambo, in South Sudan.
According to the St Joseph Missionary Society Mill Hill Missionary’s Formation Centre in Cameroon, Fr Ondari, who was ordained in March 2017, was killed by Cameroon military.
“With heavy and broken hearts, the Mill Hill Missionaries in Cameroon confirm the death of our brother and fellow Mill Hill missionary priest from Kenya Fr Cosmas Omboto Ondari,” Fr Richard Njoroge of the Formation Centre said in a statement.
Quoting a source who had requested anonymity, Fr Njoroge said Fr Ondari had been shot twice by soldiers who fled in a speeding military vehicle, and died on the spot.
The murder is the latest in a succession of attacks on clerics in the conflict-torn country, with an American missionary and a 19-year-old seminarian being killed in separate incidents last month and a priest, Fr Alexander Sob Nougi, being shot at close-range on July 20 in an attack Church officials have called a targeted assassination.