The Globe and Mail, Canada
Aug 3 2004

Iraq’s Christians shaken after attacks

By ORLY HALPERN
>From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail

Baghdad – As they removed body parts from still-smouldering cars at
the parking lot of the St. Peter and Paul church yesterday in
Baghdad, Christian Iraqis wondered when and where they would be
attacked next.

A series of co-ordinated car bombings that hit five Catholic churches
in Baghdad and Mosul during Sunday-evening prayers, killing at least
12 and injuring dozens, raised many questions and fears about the
future of the small Christian community in Iraq.

“I am now scared to go to church,” said Louis Climis, a leader in the
Syriac Catholic community who was injured Sunday. He was helping the
priest during the mass when a car bomb exploded outside his church in
the heavily Christian Karada district of Baghdad.

“I feel I am a target,” he said.

There were other Christian targets. Coalition forces reported that
the Iraqi National Guard found another bomb outside a second Mosul
church. Baher Butti, a Syriac Orthodox Church leader from Baghdad,
said there were reports of bombing attempts outside three other
churches in the capital.

“I called the Metropolit [Syriac Orthodox religious leader],” Dr.
Butti said. “He was very worried. They think that every church might
be hit now.”

Dr. Butti also fears that Christian religious leaders may be
assassinated. “We can’t anticipate what the terrorists will do next.
I’m so confused. What are they thinking?”

Christians, who make up about 3 per cent of Iraq’s population of 25
million people, have traditionally kept a relatively low profile. A
spate of attacks on alcohol sellers fuelled fears that Christians
might be singled out for attack, but unlike the mosques targeted by
extremists for bombings in the past year, their places of worship had
seemed safe until Sunday.

Most Christians interviewed were sure the bombers were not Iraqi. The
driver of the explosive-laden car who stopped near Our Lady of
Salvation church spoke in an Egyptian dialect, witnesses said.

Church leaders said they were unsure what should be done to prevent
future attacks.

At the St. Peter and Paul church, a single guard armed with an AK-47
was at the site to defend the building and an adjacent convent.

Father Firas Toma, of St. Peter and Paul, was stunned as he surveyed
the parking lot where 12 people from his church were burned alive in
their cars after a suicide bomber detonated a car outside the church
gate. Six churchgoers were still missing yesterday.

“We were already attacked,” he said, when asked about security
measures. “What worse can happen than this?”

At Our Lady of Salvation church, Armenian Catholic leaders closed off
the street with barbed wire and were considering what more to do.

“I don’t think we’ll have mass next Sunday,” said Nubar Antoine, a
member of the Armenian Catholic leadership council. “We Catholic
churches must have a meeting and talk to the Patriarch in Beirut and
the papal embassy in Baghdad and take a joint decision.”

Iraqi Muslim religious leaders have condemned the church bombings,
calling them terrorist attacks intended to create havoc.

Rev. Andrew White, the director of the International Centre for
Reconciliation, was more specific. “They want to identify the
Christians as part of the West and say that the Christians are not
real Iraqis,” Canon White said. “They want to try to move them out.”

But some Iraqi Christians were defiant. “This is my home,” said an
Armenian nun, Fidel Rahbe. “I was born here and will die here.”