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  • Iraq's Christians shaken after attacks

    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."
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