Baghdad: Churches attacked

2004-10-16 17:54

Baghdad - The streets of Baghdad reverberated with shock and disbelief following a spate of attacks on Saturday against five churches at the start of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.

The five seemingly coordinated attacks caused no casualties but appeared to have struck Iraq's small Christian community to the core, highlighting once again their fragile existence in a predominantly Muslim country after a series of similar attacks on churches in Baghdad and Mosul in August that left at least 10 dead.

A few parishioners climbed over heaps of rubble in front of Saint George's, the worst hit in the attacks.

The church's interior was reduced to smouldering ashes as morning light streamed through two gaping holes on each side of the small Catholic temple.

Black soot covered the walls except for biblical scripture above the altar.

"Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you so sins would be forgiven," it read in Arabic.

A woman dressed in black broke down in tears near the altar where a massive wooden cross once stood, of which only a metal support now remains.

"What happened to the prayer books?" asked a white-haired man bitterly.

"All gone up in flames," answered the church's caretaker Nabil Jamil, his fingers sifting through a heap of charred bibles.

He said he was in a small room in the back of the building when a massive explosion rocked the church in Baghdad's central Karrada district on the east bank of the Tigris.

"I heard some noise in the front, so I got up to check it," he said.

"The guards opposite told me it was nothing so I went back to sleep and then the explosion went off shortly after that."

A Muslim neighbour, who did not wish to be identified, said he saw a man leave a package at the gate of the church before rushing back into a waiting car a few blocks away.

- SAPA