Independent Online, South Africa
Aug 2 2004

Zarqawi blamed for Iraqi church attacks

Baghdad – Iraq’s Christian minority became the latest target of
violence in Iraq on Sunday when explosions killed at least 10 people
outside churches here and in the northern city of Mosul.

And on Monday, Iraq’s national security adviser said the attacks
carry the hallmarks of suspected al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

“There is no shadow of a doubt that this bears the blueprint of
Zarqawi,” Mowaffaq al-Rubaie told Reuters, 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.”

‘There is no shadow of a doubt that this bears the blueprint of
Zarqawi’
Rubaie said Iraq’s national security council would hold an emergency
meeting on Monday to discuss the blasts that hit at least five
churches, including four in Baghdad.

Six car bombs blew up in Baghdad and Mosul churches in the first
attack against Christian places of worship since US-led forces
toppled Saddam Hussein in April 2003. Fifty people were wounded.

Six people died when one of the bombs exploded inside a huge church
and seminary compound in southern Baghdad, causing massive damage,
police and medics said.

A rescue worker at the Al-Dura compound said he pulled out six dead
women and two dead children from the debris.

The bomb exploded as worshippers were leaving evening mass, an AFP
correspondent at the scene said.

‘It’s a crime. It’s Sunday, we were at mass’
A car was detonated by a suicide bomber outside an Armenian church in
Baghdad’s upmarket district of Karada, said policeman Haidar Abdul
Hussein.

Minutes later, a second car bomb exploded next to a Catholic Syriac
church.

Police reported a fourth explosion outside a Chaldean Catholic church
in the east of Baghdad.

“It’s a crime. It’s Sunday, we were at mass. There were a lot of
women and children,” said Bishop Raphael Kutami at the Syriac church
in Baghdad.

Another priest said the explosion occurred as people were leaving the
church and the number of wounded was unkown.

In Mosul, 370 kilometres north of the capital, two car bombs exploded
in the early evening outside the Mar Polis church in the central
Mohandessin neighborhood, Major Mohammed Omar Taha said.

Medics there said one person was killed and 15 were wounded in the
bombings.

In the northern oil city of Kirkuk, police said an explosion went off
in the evening in a Christian neighborhood, but there were no
casualties because most people were at church.

A Vatican spokesperson described the attacks as “terrible and very
worrying because it is the first time that Christian places of
worship have been targeted in Iraq.”

“It seems that someone wants to increase tension by trying to hit all
groups, the churches included,” said the spokesman, the Reverend Ciro
Benedettini.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress