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| Tuesday, 3 August 2004 |
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Iraqi Christians targeted; fate of African, Indian hostages unknown BAGHDAD, Monday (AFP) Iraq's Christian minority became the latest target of violence in Iraq when explosions killed at least 10 people outside churches here and in the northern city of Mosul, while the fate of seven foreign hostages was mired by contradictory reports about their fate. 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. Some 50 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. 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 (230 miles) 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 spokesman 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. The church attacks came amid confusion over the fate of truck drivers from Kenya, India and Egypt who have been held hostage. Kenyan Foreign Minister Chirau Ali Mwakwere announced that the three Kenyans and four other hostages had been freed and were "in the safe custody of the Egyptian embassy" in Baghdad. But the Kuwaiti company that employs the truck drivers, and Egyptian and Indian officials denied that the men had been released. |
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