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Six churches attacked during worship services
Terrorists in Iraq have attacked Christians before, but never like this. Previous attacks have focused on liquor stores, which tend to be operated by Christians since Islam forbids alcohol sales. Other attacks on Christians seem to have been more directed at general chaos or against foreigners. But yesterday's attack on six churches in Baghdad and Mosul was the first against native Iraqi Christians as Christians. (AP has video, BBC has a photo gallery.)

One church was in the middle of Communion. Another congregation was listening to the sermon. Still another was reportedly in the middle of a funeral service. By the end of the bombings, which were apparently coordinated over a 30-minute period, at least 11 people were dead and 52 injured. That number is expected to rise, says The Guardian. "We are expecting a huge number of casualties," an Interior Ministry official told Reuters.

The first attack was against the Armenian Catholic Cathedral in Baghdad's Karada district. As with four of the six attacks, it was a car bombing. It was about 6:30 p.m., and the service had only just begun. (Christian churches hold services in the evening because Sunday is a workday in Iraq; the weekend is Thursday and Friday.) After the explosion, parishioners ran outside, only to witness a similar attack on the Our Lady of Salvation Church Assyrian Catholic Church about 500 yards away. Shortly thereafter, St Peter and St Paul Church, next to the Chaldean Catholic Seminary in Dura district, and the St. Elijah of Heyra Church in the New Baghdad district were bombed. Most of the deaths occurred at St. Elijah's, since congregants were leaving the service when the bomb went off.

The attack wasn't limited to Baghdad: 220 miles north, in the city of Mosul, another car bomb exploded outside the Mar Polis (St Paul) Catholic Church. Here, unlike the other attacks, rocket-propelled grenades were also fired at the church.

The attacks could have been much worse. Police found a bomb outside St John the Baptist Church in Dura (the only non-Catholic church targeted in yesterday's attack), but were able to defuse it before it went off.

The Times of London reports that the attacker of the Church of Our Lady of the Flowers, the Karada Armenian Catholic congregation, tried to get much further into the compound:

Muhammad Ali Mansour, a 25-year-old guard protecting a neighboring government building, said that the bomber, a heavily bearded Arab in a taxi, had begged him to be let through a street barricade.

"He pleaded repeatedly, saying, 'I have something to do inside.' But we know all the residents here and he was a stranger. He begged us three times but I sent him away and he went up another road," he told The Times.

The bomber instead targeted an electrical generator and its fuel tanks, but few were seriously injured and there and no deaths were reported. Another small grace: Police found four unexploded artillery shells in the remains of the car.

Regardless of whether the attack could have been worse, many Iraqis are predicting that it will get worse.

"I'm sure this is the beginning of a campaign against Christians," Lance Conway, a choir member at the Church of Our Lady of the Flowers, told the Chicago Tribune. "It was at a time when we were celebrating Mass so they were targeting people, not just the building."

Indeed, fellow parishioner Mazen Sami Hartayoun said the attack went beyond mere terrorism. "This is not an explosion to scare people," he told The Times. "If you want to frighten them you'd use a small bomb."

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August (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48