AT LEAST 11 KILLED IN IRAQ CHURCH EXPLOSIONS
BLAMED ON AL QAEDA
Government to hold emergency meeting
By: Stefan J. Bos
Monday, August 2, 2004
BAGHDAD,
IRAQ (ANS) -- At
least 11 people have died and dozens were rushed to hospitals following
the largest ever terrorist attacks against Iraq's minority Christians
since the insurgency began, 15 months ago, reports said early Monday,
August 2.
(Pictured: Smoke seen in Baghdad following church
explosions near Adam Hotel - Photo source: EKA/VOA).
The death toll was far worse than the initial estimates of 20 injured
Christians after the explosions outside five churches in Baghdad and
Mosul during Sunday evening services.
Reuters news agency quoted Iraq's security adviser as saying that a key
al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was responsible for the blasts,
adding to fresh fears among Iraq's roughly 750,000 Christians that they
may be targeted by Islamic extremists.
"There is no shadow of a doubt that this bears the blueprint of
Zarqawi," Mowaffaq al-Rubaie told Reuters on Monday, adding the attacks
on Sunday evening were an attempt to drive Iraq's minority Christians
out of the country. "Zarqawi and his extremists are basically trying to
drive a wedge between Muslims and Christians in Iraq."
EMERGENCY MEETING
Rubaie said Iraq's National Security Council would hold an emergency
meeting on Monday, August 2, to discuss the blasts. Militants have
accused Christians of supporting the United States-led coalition
forces, and since last year several believers working for the American
military were assassinated.
In addition Islamic radicals have killed Christians running liquor
stores and warned others to shut down their businesses, ASSIST News
Service (ANS) learned previously in Baghdad. They have also targeted
fashion stores and beauty salons, news reports say.
"What are the Muslims doing? Does this mean that they want us out?"
Brother Louis, a deacon at Our Lady of Salvation, asked reporters as he
cried outside the damaged Assyrian Catholic church. "Those people who
commit these awful criminal acts have nothing to do with God. They will
go to hell," he told The Associated Press (AP).
Human rights workers have already said that thousands of Christians are
fleeing Iraq. The explosions in Baghdad came just minutes apart and hit
four churches two in Karada, one in the southern Dora neighborhood and
one in New Baghdad, killing 10 people and injuring more than 40 others,
U.S. military officials said.
FIFTH BLAST
AP quoted police Maj. Fawaz Fanaan as saying that one person was killed
in another, fifth church blast, in Mosul about 220 miles (352
kilometers) north of the capital. Mosul is seen as a symbol for Iraq's
Christians, who are mainly ethnic Assyrians speaking the language Jesus
spoke. The town was built near the ruins of Nineveh, where the Bible
says Prophet Jonah brought the message of repentance.
The Voice Of the Martyrs (VOM), a Christian human rights group, said
the attack came just a month after one Christian was injured when a
grenade was thrown at a church in Mosul. VOM added that the most deadly
attack was against a Chaldean church in the Doura district where,
reportedly, at least eight people were killed.
The explosions came as a shock for worshippers in Baghdad. "We were in
Mass and suddenly we heard a big boom, and I couldn't feel my body
anymore. I didn't feel anything," said Marwan Saqiq who was covered in
blood after the attack on Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad's heavily
Christian Karada neighborhood, reported AP. "I saw people taking me out
with the wood and glass shattered everywhere."
WOMEN AND CHILDREN
The first blast in Karada hit an Armenian church after 6 p.m., just 15
minutes into the evening service, another witnesses said. The second
blast a few minutes later hit the Roman Catholic church about 500 yards
away, news reports said. "I saw injured women and children and men, the
church's glass shattered everywhere," said Juliette Agob, in an
interview with AP, who was inside the Armenian church during the first
explosion.
Iraqi police discovered a sixth bomb, consisting of 15 mortar rounds,
outside a Baghdad church, and authorities disarmed it, the U.S.
military said in a statement. The attacks did not appear to be suicide
bombings, U.S. military and Iraqi officials claimed.
The Vatican has called the attacks "terrible and worrisome," while
Muslim clerics condemned the violence and offered condolences to the
Christian community.
PRAYERS URGED
VOM, which has close ties to persecuted Christians in the region, urged
its mainly born-again Christian supporters to "pray for those injured
and the families of those killed." It also said it was crucial to "pray
that these types of attacks will not escalate in Iraq" and to pray that
Christians will "experience peace in the midst of this terrible storm"
and that "Iraq will soon find the peace for which the majority of
people are
longing."
However the latest attacks have raised new questions about the apparent
inability of the new interim government to deal with the security
crisis in the troubled nation.
Separate violence beginning the night before, killed 24, including an
American soldier, and wounded 101. 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, news reports said.
Yet Iraqi pastor Ghassan Thomas told ANS earlier that violence is not
necessarily bad news for spiritual growth in the country. "This is the
best time. People are hungry for Christ, they need Christ now," he said
in his Evangelical Alliance Church where hundreds of people were
attending meetings in a rented church building in Baghdad.
Read more on these and other news stories
on news agency
BosNewsLife at website
http://www.bosnewslife.com
Award winning
Journalist Stefan J. Bos was born on the 19th of September 1967 in a
small home in downtown Amsterdam, in the Netherlands not far from the
typewriter of his father, who was (and still is) a Reporter and
ghostwriter. Already at a very young age Bos decided to become
journalist and finally arrived in Hungary, the same country where his
parents had smuggled Bibles during Communism.
Bos has traveled extensively to cover wars and revolutions throughout
the region and received the Annual Press Award of Merit from the
Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for his coverage about foreign
policy affairs including Hungary's relationship with NATO and the
European Union. Stefan J. Bos can be reached at: stefan@bosnewslife.com. |
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