At least three soldiers stormed a church in the region’s southwest over the Christmas holidays, where they forced believers to drink alcohol against their beliefs, abducted clergymen and women, and locked five members and three children of the church in a hut that they set on fire.

“It is something that we have not witnessed,” Anglican Archbishop Paul Pitia Benjamin Yugusuk told Religion Unplugged. “While they [the soldiers] were moving with four women, these five men escaped the burning house although they had some burn injuries.”

The three young children also escaped to safety and are being treated for their injuries.