Christian Post, CA
Dec 7 2004
Gunmen Attack Armenian, Chaldean Churches in Iraq
Gunmen attacked two churches in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul
Tuesday in the latest violence against Iraq’s minority Christian
community
Pic: Workers remove a damaged gate at an Armenian church after gunmen
attacked two churches in the latest violence directed against one of
Iraq ‘s several religious and ethnic groups, witnesses said in the
tense northern Iraqi city of Mosul December 7, 2004. (Photo: REUTERS
/ Namir Noor-Eldeen)
Gunmen attacked two churches in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul
Tuesday in the latest violence against Iraq’s minority Christian
community, witnesses said. Members of the churches, one Armenian, the
other Chaldean, said gunmen burst in, forced people to leave and set
off explosions inside the buildings, damaging them but hurting no
one.
“Gunmen entered the church at about 4:30 pm (1330 GMT),” said Father
Raghid Aziz Kara at the Chaldean church. “They gathered those present
in one room and planted explosive charges in different parts of the
building,”
Aziz told AFP, “We were then taken outside and the armed men set off
the devices. We heard three blasts.”
At that same moment, gunmen attacked the Armenian Church, forcing out
a security guard and two other people inside the building. The guard
told AFP that he had heard two explosions.
The attacks are the latest in a string of increasing violence
directed at Iraq’s Christian minority that has led to the destruction
of places of worship and the building exodus of its 800,000 or so
members.
In a recent report by the Religion News Service, the agency reported
that an estimated one of every 10 Iraqi Christians has fled the
country, most of them to neighboring Syria.
“After decades of living in relative harmony with the country’s
Muslim majority, Iraq’s Christian minority says it is under threat as
never before,” RNS reported.
Sister Beninia Hermes Shoukwana, a Christian nun and headmistress of
a public school in Baghdad, told RNS that she was unable to hide her
distress over the fate of her country and fellow Christians, most of
them Chaldeans.
“For years Christians and Muslims lived like brothers and sisters,”
Shoukwana told RNS.
“Today the extremists are trying to separate us.”
Last month, masked men detonated a bomb near an Orthodox Church in
southern Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 34. In October,
five Baghdad churches were attacked, causing damage but no
casualties. In August, similar attacks killed at least 10 and wounded
nearly 50 Iraqi Christians.
The attacks follow an outbreak of insurgent violence across Iraq as
the country nears its first democratic elections, slated for January.