ANKARA: Church attacked in northern Turkey

NTV MSNBC, Turkey
Jan 29 2007

Church attacked in northern Turkey
No one was hurt in the attack, though minor damage was done to the
church.

Güncelleme: 11:40 TSİ 29 Ocak 2007 PazartesiSAMSUN – A church in
the Turkish Black Sea city of Samsun was damaged Sunday when
unidentified attackers threw stones at the building, breaking a
number of windows.

The attack came nine days after a Turkish-Armenian journalist, Hrant
Dink, was gunned down outside his office in Istanbul, provoking
widespread condemnation.
Five men have been charged over the shooting, with the man alleged to
have carried out the attack coming from Trabzon, also on Turkey’s
Black Sea coast.
According to Mehmet Orhan Picakcilar, a priest at the Agape Church,
there were no casualties in the attack.

`This does damage to Turkey. This attack depicts Turkey in a bad way
before international public opinion,’ Picakcilar was quoted by the
Reuters news agency as saying.

In February last year, a Catholic priest was shot and killed in his
church in Trabzon.