America
Six black churches burnt after Charleston church massacre
Washington, July 2
In the two weeks after a
racially motivated massacre claimed lives of nine African-Americans, at
least six predominantly African-American churches in south US had been
burnt down, Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday.
The latest
fire occurred on Tuesday night in the Mount Zion Church in Greeleyville,
South Carolina, 20 years after it was set ablaze by the white
supremacist group Ku Klux Klan.
The fire left the church roofless
and given lightning and storms were reported overnight in the region,
authorities said it was still too early to determine the cause of the
fire.
Tuesday night's fire came as authorities in Georgia, North
Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee were investigating a string of
fires at other predominantly black churches.
Though the
authorities said three of the five fires were arson, investigators did
not describe any of the incidents as hate crimes.
Just hours
before the fire at the Mount Zion Church, some 100 km north of the
Charleston church, where a white gunman shot down nine African-American
churchgoers on June 17, civil rights group National Association for the
Advance of Colored People (NAACP) had warned black churches around the
country to beef up security.
All the six fires happened after
Dylann Roof, 21, started a shooting spree on June 17 night at the
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South
Carolina. After his arrest, Roof reportedly told police that he wanted
to start a "race war".