A man has been shot dead during a church service in Colombia.  

About 200 people were inside Saint John Paul II Church in the southern town of Cali when a woman fired a number of shots. The service was being live-streamed and showed a nun at the altar when the firing started. She dropped to the floor and people in the pews started shouting, Crux reported. 

The attacker was sitting in a pew at the back of the church when she started shooting. She left with a man who was waiting outside on a motorbike.

The attack which happened on 15 July, also injured a woman who was near the man who died. She was injured in the leg but her injuries were not serious. 

The victim, 50-year-old Erasmo Trujillo was described as an active member of the church who attended Mass every week with his wife, children, and grandchildren.

The church's vicar, Fr Oscar de la Vega, criticised local police who revealed that Trujillo had been arrested in 2016 for allegedly being involved with drug trafficking and conspiracy to commit a crime: “It was apparently a situation that happened years ago, but he had never been convicted of any crime. They stigmatized him without giving more information on the subject, thus reducing the impact of the crime.”

He said he was supporting Trujillo's family who were dealing with both his loss and also "stigmatization suffered by the victim... A church is a place of reconciliation and reconstruction. Something like that can never happen inside of a church,”

 A special mass of reparation will be celebrated at the church this weekend.