Coordinated Blasts on Iraqi Christian Churches Kill 11
Amid a rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism, Iraqi Christians fear being targeted as suspected collaborators with the U.S.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP)--Assailants launched the first major attack on Iraq's minority Christians since the insurgency began, triggering a coordinated series of explosions outside five churches in Baghdad and Mosul that killed 11 people and injured more than 50.
Authorities disarmed a sixth bomb outside a Baghdad church on Sunday, as fears grew in Iraq's 750,000-member Christian minority that they might be targeted as suspected collaborators with American forces amid a rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism.
"What are the Muslims doing? Does this mean that they want us out?" Brother Louis, a deacon at Our Lady of Salvation, asked as he cried outside the damaged Assyrian Catholic church.
Separate violence beginning the night before killed 24 people, including an American soldier, and wounded dozens more. The toll included a suicide car bombing outside a Mosul police station that killed five people and wounded 53, and clashes in Fallujah between U.S. troops and insurgents that killed 12 Iraqis and wounded 39 others.
The wave of explosions at Christian churches at least four of them car bombings began after 6 p.m. as parishioners gathered inside their neighborhood churches for services. The blasts shattered stained-glass windows and sent churchgoers screaming into the streets.
The explosions came just minutes apart and hit four churches in Baghdad two in Karada, one in the Dora neighborhood and one in New Baghdad. A fifth church was hit in Mosul, about 220 miles north of the capital. The attacks did not appear to be suicide bombings, U.S. military and Iraqi officials said.
The Baghdad church attacks killed 10 people and injured more than 40 others, according to a U.S. military statement. The Mosul blast killed one person and injured 11 others, police Maj. Fawaz Fanaan said.
''This (attack) isn't against Muslims or Christians, this is against Iraq,'' Deputy Foreign Minister Labid Abawi told The Associated Press.
The Vatican called the attacks ''terrible and worrisome,'' said spokesman Rev. Ciro Benedettini.
Muslim clerics condemned the violence and offered condolences to the Christian community.
''This is a cowardly act and targets all Iraqis,'' Abdul Hadi al-Daraji, spokesman for radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, told Al-Jazeera television.
The attacks on the churches signaled a change in tactics for insurgents, who have focused many previous attacks on U.S. forces, Iraqi officials and police in a drive to push coalition forces from the country, weaken the interim government and hamper reconstruction efforts.
To escape the chaos here, many of Iraq's Christians have gone to neighboring Jordan and Syria to wait for the security situation to improve.
Many who remained watched with fear as Islamic fundamentalism, long repressed under Saddam Hussein's fallen regime, thrived. Islamic radicals have warned Christians running liquor stores to shut down their businesses and have turned their sights on fashion stores and beauty salons.
But the church attacks Sunday went far beyond those threats.
The first blast in Karada hit an Armenian church after 6 p.m., just 15 minutes into the evening service, witnesses said. The second blast a few minutes later hit the Roman Catholic church about 500 yards away.
''I saw injured women and children and men, the church's glass shattered everywhere,'' said Juliette Agob, who was inside the Armenian church during the first explosion.
In the Mosul attack, insurgents parked a white Toyota Supra outside a Catholic church, launched a rocket toward the building and then detonated the car bomb about 7 p.m., the U.S. military said in a statement.
The attack destroyed five cars and badly damaged a church office, but did little damage to the church itself, the military said.
Earlier in Mosul, a white sport utility vehicle sped toward barriers at the Summar police station and a police guard opened fire, killing the driver, the police and U.S. military said.
The vehicle crashed into the concrete barriers around the station and exploded, killing five people, including three police officers, said AbdelAzil Hafoudi, an official at al-Salam hospital. He said 53 people were wounded.
Also, a roadside bombing near the town of Samarra hit a passing patrol, killing two U.S. soldiers and wounding one other, the military said.
At least 911 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq in March 2003.
In central Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed two civilians and wounded two others, said Fawad Allah, an officer at Karada police station. Another roadside bomb, along a southern Baghdad highway, killed one man Sunday and wounded two others, said police Lt. Col. Assad Ibrahim Hameed.
A drive-by shooting north of Baghdad killed three police officers and wounded three others.
Also Sunday, a Lebanese businessman taken hostage was released, a day after he was snatched by gunmen outside Baghdad, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry said. It was not immediately clear if a ransom was paid for Vladimir Damaa's release. The fate of another Lebanese businessman, Antoine Antoun, abducted at the same time, was not known.
Meanwhile, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said Sunday that any Muslim and Arab forces sent to Iraq must replace coalition troops there.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has urged Arab and Muslim nations to send troops.
Omar Sinan
Associated Press
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP)--Assailants launched the first major attack on Iraq's minority Christians since the insurgency began, triggering a coordinated series of explosions outside five churches in Baghdad and Mosul that killed 11 people and injured more than 50.
Authorities disarmed a sixth bomb outside a Baghdad church on Sunday, as fears grew in Iraq's 750,000-member Christian minority that they might be targeted as suspected collaborators with American forces amid a rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism.
"What are the Muslims doing? Does this mean that they want us out?" Brother Louis, a deacon at Our Lady of Salvation, asked as he cried outside the damaged Assyrian Catholic church.
Separate violence beginning the night before killed 24 people, including an American soldier, and wounded dozens more. The toll included a suicide car bombing outside a Mosul police station that killed five people and wounded 53, and clashes in Fallujah between U.S. troops and insurgents that killed 12 Iraqis and wounded 39 others.
The wave of explosions at Christian churches at least four of them car bombings began after 6 p.m. as parishioners gathered inside their neighborhood churches for services. The blasts shattered stained-glass windows and sent churchgoers screaming into the streets.
The explosions came just minutes apart and hit four churches in Baghdad two in Karada, one in the Dora neighborhood and one in New Baghdad. A fifth church was hit in Mosul, about 220 miles north of the capital. The attacks did not appear to be suicide bombings, U.S. military and Iraqi officials said.
The Baghdad church attacks killed 10 people and injured more than 40 others, according to a U.S. military statement. The Mosul blast killed one person and injured 11 others, police Maj. Fawaz Fanaan said.
''This (attack) isn't against Muslims or Christians, this is against Iraq,'' Deputy Foreign Minister Labid Abawi told The Associated Press.
The Vatican called the attacks ''terrible and worrisome,'' said spokesman Rev. Ciro Benedettini.
Muslim clerics condemned the violence and offered condolences to the Christian community.
''This is a cowardly act and targets all Iraqis,'' Abdul Hadi al-Daraji, spokesman for radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, told Al-Jazeera television.
The attacks on the churches signaled a change in tactics for insurgents, who have focused many previous attacks on U.S. forces, Iraqi officials and police in a drive to push coalition forces from the country, weaken the interim government and hamper reconstruction efforts.
To escape the chaos here, many of Iraq's Christians have gone to neighboring Jordan and Syria to wait for the security situation to improve.
Many who remained watched with fear as Islamic fundamentalism, long repressed under Saddam Hussein's fallen regime, thrived. Islamic radicals have warned Christians running liquor stores to shut down their businesses and have turned their sights on fashion stores and beauty salons.
But the church attacks Sunday went far beyond those threats.
The first blast in Karada hit an Armenian church after 6 p.m., just 15 minutes into the evening service, witnesses said. The second blast a few minutes later hit the Roman Catholic church about 500 yards away.
''I saw injured women and children and men, the church's glass shattered everywhere,'' said Juliette Agob, who was inside the Armenian church during the first explosion.
In the Mosul attack, insurgents parked a white Toyota Supra outside a Catholic church, launched a rocket toward the building and then detonated the car bomb about 7 p.m., the U.S. military said in a statement.
The attack destroyed five cars and badly damaged a church office, but did little damage to the church itself, the military said.
Earlier in Mosul, a white sport utility vehicle sped toward barriers at the Summar police station and a police guard opened fire, killing the driver, the police and U.S. military said.
The vehicle crashed into the concrete barriers around the station and exploded, killing five people, including three police officers, said AbdelAzil Hafoudi, an official at al-Salam hospital. He said 53 people were wounded.
Also, a roadside bombing near the town of Samarra hit a passing patrol, killing two U.S. soldiers and wounding one other, the military said.
At least 911 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq in March 2003.
In central Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed two civilians and wounded two others, said Fawad Allah, an officer at Karada police station. Another roadside bomb, along a southern Baghdad highway, killed one man Sunday and wounded two others, said police Lt. Col. Assad Ibrahim Hameed.
A drive-by shooting north of Baghdad killed three police officers and wounded three others.
Also Sunday, a Lebanese businessman taken hostage was released, a day after he was snatched by gunmen outside Baghdad, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry said. It was not immediately clear if a ransom was paid for Vladimir Damaa's release. The fate of another Lebanese businessman, Antoine Antoun, abducted at the same time, was not known.
Meanwhile, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said Sunday that any Muslim and Arab forces sent to Iraq must replace coalition troops there.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has urged Arab and Muslim nations to send troops.
Omar Sinan
Associated Press
posted by R7 | 8/24/2004 07:49:00 PM
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Iraq's Christians Asked to Stay
Iraq's ambassador to the Vatican appeals to Christians not to flee the country after attacks kill and injure dozens.
PARIS, Aug 26 (UPI) -- The designated Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican, Albert Yelda, appealed to his nation's Christian minority Thursday not to turn their backs on their country.
Reached by telephone at his Baghdad office, Yelda pleaded with his co-religionists not to forget that "we are the descendants of the original residents of present-day Iraq." Referring to the bombing of five Iraqi churches earlier this month, Yelda insisted: "This was the work of foreign terrorists. Iraq's Muslim leaders do not want us to leave. Christians enjoy their highest respect."
Yelda, who will take up his post in Rome as soon as the Vatican accredits him, estimated that "less than 1 million" of his country's 23 million inhabitants are Christians.
Yelda's appeal came in the wake of an exodus following the attacks on the churches, causing the death of a dozen Christians; 50 more were injured. As a result, some 40,000 members of different Christian denominations fled their homeland, according to Pascale Icho Wardo, Iraq's emigration minister.
Yelda told United Press International he considered this figure "a little high" but agreed that thousands, perhaps tens of thousands had gone. "And that's tragic," he said, pointing out that these refugees left the soil where their ancestors had created one of mankind's oldest and most spectacular civilizations--Mesopotamia.
Curiously, while many leave, others--though in much smaller numbers -- return from exile in Western Europe, Australia and the United States, especially the Chicago area, home to the largest group of Assyrian Christian expatriates. "They are business people, physicians, lawyers and teachers willing to invest in Iraq and participate in the reconstruction of its society," Yelda said.
He is himself a returnee who had spent most of his adult life as a refugee in the United Kingdom, where he had fled while officially under house arrest at age 16 in Baghdad.
Yelda is veteran opponent of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. As a 12-year-old boy, he led school rebellions against Saddam's regime in Baghdad and helped found the Assyrian "Black Palm," an organization fighting what he later called Saddam's attempt to "Arabize" the Assyrians by suppressing their language, Aramaic, which is closely related to the language of Jesus.
"Saddam Hussein was engaged in a campaign of cultural genocide," Yelda used to say during his stay in London, where he was one of the leaders of the Iraqi National Congress, then the largest opposition movement in exile.
He said he empathized with Christians fleeing Iraq after the latest wave of attacks--including rapes--on young women working for the American military and foreign corporations.
But, he added, "Christians must not give up their properties here. If they want to flee the violence, which is not the work of local Muslims, they should rather go north to Kurdish territory, and then come back when security in Baghdad has improved."
In a sense, this is already happening. Assyrians are returning in droves to Kurdistan whence they had escaped after the destruction of their villages on Saddam's orders. "Not a day goes by without a family contacting me wishing to come back, especially since the terrorist attacks in Baghdad in early August," Patros Harboli, bishop of Dohuk, told Le Figaro, the French national daily.
His colleague Raban Qas, bishop of Amadia, related that 150 Christian families had requested help for their repatriation to his diocese.
"Everything has to be rebuilt here--houses, roads, schools, dispensaries. They were all razed by Saddam Hussein," he said, according to the French paper, which also reported that local Muslims provided significant assistance to returning Christians.
Meanwhile in the capital, prominent Muslim clerics and political leaders keep telling Albert Yelda that they do not want to see Christians sell their property and move across the border to Jordan, Syria and then on to the West.
"They go out of their way to show us their respect, inviting our patriarchs to all major events," he said, "and they roundly condemned the attacks on our people, the bombings of our shops, the rapes and the killings."
After five churches were bombed in early August, many Christians stayed away from their houses of worship. But now that the government is providing better security for them, Yelda concluded, "church services are as well attended as ever."
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