THE COUNT IS NOW FIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES HAVE BEEN BOMBED
Two Blasts Rock Baghdad Churches
Sunday, August 01, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Two car bombs rocked Baghdad in a matter of minutes on Sunday in what was apparently a coordinated attack on the city's Christian community. At least 20 people were wounded.
An Iraqi security source says the attacks were the work of homicide bombers, Reuters reported.
A huge plume of black smoke was seen billowing above the city following the blasts as ambulances and police raced to the scene in the city's Karada neighborhood (search).
An ambulance driver said two people were killed, according to Reuters.
The first blast hit outside an Armenian church just 15 minutes into the evening service, witnesses said. The second bomb blew up outside a Catholic church about 200 yards away.
"I saw injured women and children and men, the church's glass shattered everywhere. There's glass all over the floor," said Juliette Agob, who was inside the Armenian church during the first explosion.
Massive plumes of black smoke poured into the evening sky over the city as firefighters struggled to put out the flames. U.S. helicopter gunships hovered above the scene.
Firefighters and residents struggled with water hoses to put out the flames, which leapt from the front of a tan colored church and several blackened, destroyed cars.
U.S. soldiers responding to the attack were seen applying bandages to the wounded.
Earlier Sunday, a car bomb exploded outside a police station in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul (search), killing at least five people and injuring 53 others, police said.
The blast followed a night of clashes between U.S. troops and insurgents that killed 12 Iraqis and wounded 39 others in the battleground city of Fallujah (search), west of the capital. Northwest of Baghdad, insurgents detonated a bomb late Saturday that wounded four U.S. troops, who shot dead one attacker, the military said Sunday.
In central Baghdad, guerrillas set off a roadside bomb Sunday that killed two civilians and wounded two others, said policeman Fawad Allah.
A driver for the British Broadcasting Corp. suffered non-life-threatening wounds to the head, the BBC's Baghdad bureau chief said. The blast sent plumes of black smoke rising above Abu Nawas street, on the eastern bank of the Tigris River.
Meanwhile, U.S. authorities released 128 prisoners from the Abu Ghraib (search) prison, west of Baghdad, bringing the total number of detainees released since January to 7,000.
The 8 a.m. blast in Mosul occurred when a white four-wheel drive vehicle sped into a restricted entrance outside the Summar police station, prompting guards to open fire, said Abdella Zuheir, a policeman at the scene. The vehicle then came to halt and exploded, he said.
The bomb killed at least five people, including three police, said Abdel Azil Hafoudi, an officer at al-Salam hospital. He said 53 people were wounded, 8 police officers among them.
Insurgents have been pressing a campaign to destabilize the interim government despite last month's transfer of sovereignty from the U.S. occupation authority. About 160,000 coalition troops, mostly Americans, remain in Iraq.
"We were expecting such terrorist attacks against us," Zuheir said. "This is a cowardly act."
Witnesses said the police station was also damaged, along with five cars and several nearby shops.
The blast left a nine-foot crater and spread shattered glass and debris across the road. The engine of one car, presumably that of the bomber, was laying in the road. One policeman sat outside the station weeping.
In Fallujah, 12 people were killed and 39 wounded during fighting late Saturday and early Sunday in the eastern part of the city, a Health Ministry official said on condition of anonymity. The U.S. military said it had killed 10 assailants during the clashes.
Huge explosions were heard in Fallujah overnight as U.S. forces briefly entered the city, residents said. Clashes occurred on the eastern edge of the city and U.S. helicopters fired up to eight rockets into an industrial area, they said.
The U.S. military said assailants firing mortars, machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades "repeatedly attacked a position held by Marines," who returned fire with tanks but suffered no casualties.
"The fire was directed at enemy fighters in civilian attire observed firing several hundred meters (yards) away," the statement said.
Coalition aircraft dropped guided bombs on a building in an industrial zone, from where "at least 20-armed men were observed firing," the statement said.
Elsewhere, four U.S. 1st Infantry Division soldiers were wounded when guerrillas attacked their patrol in Samarra, northwest of Baghdad, with a roadside bomb just before midnight Saturday, said military spokesman Maj. Neal O'Brien.
The patrol returned fire on a palm grove, killing one of the attackers, he said.
In other violence, two policemen were killed and three injured when their truck was attacked by insurgents in Haswa, 40 miles south of Baghdad on Saturday, police Lt. Ali Aubeid said.
Meanwhile, Iraqi militants said they kidnapped two Turks and threatened to behead them within 48 hours, the latest in the country's unrelenting wave of abductions.
The Tawhid and Jihad group of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (search) demanded the Turks' employers leave Iraq in a video aired on Al-Jazeera television, which showed three masked, black-garbed gunmen standing behind two seated men holding various forms of identification, including what apparently were Turkish passports.
Al-Jazeera identified the men as two Turkish truck drivers working for a Turkish company delivering goods to U.S. forces in Iraq. The network said the militants threatened to decapitate the men if their demands were not met.
The video did not indicate when the 48-hour period ends.
Militants loyal to al-Zarqawi have claimed responsibility for a number of bloody attacks and beheadings of previous foreign hostages, including U.S. businessman Nicholas Berg, South Korean translator Kim Sun-il and Bulgarian truck driver Georgi Lazov.
Also Sunday, efforts intensified to secure the release of seven foreign truck drivers — three Indians, three Kenyans and an Egyptian — taken captive by other insurgents. India sent its ambassador to Oman, Talmiz Ahmed, to Iraq to help in the negotiations, and the drivers' Kuwaiti employer sent a representative to meet with tribal leaders acting as mediators.
Rana Abu-Zeina, spokeswoman for the Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport Co., said negotiations were going well.
"God willing within hours or, at the maximum, a day or two the problem will be solved," she told Al-Arabiya television station on Sunday.
More than 70 foreigners have been kidnapped by insurgents in recent months in a campaign aimed at pushing out international troops and companies backing U.S. troops and reconstruction efforts.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
Report: Third Blast Near Church in Mosul |
