Posted on 01/30/2006 3:50:14 PM PST by siunevada
ROME (CNS) -- Unidentified militants planted explosives near several Christian churches and the Vatican Embassy in Iraq, causing few casualties but triggering fresh fears among the minority Christian population.
The near-simultaneous attacks Jan. 29 in Baghdad and Kirkuk, a northern Iraqi city, were launched just as some Sunday afternoon services had ended. A blast targeting a Chaldean Catholic church in Kirkuk left one parishioner and two passers-by dead and one person injured.
Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel-Karim Delly of Baghdad told Catholic News Service, "We thank God there was very little damage" and so few victims.
In a Jan. 30 phone interview from Baghdad, the Catholic patriarch said the attacks would affect not only Christians but "all Iraqis, all good Iraqis because they are sorry this has happened and we hope it will not happen again."
In Baghdad, a wall in front of the Vatican Embassy suffered some damage after a bomb on the opposite side of the street detonated.
An informed Vatican official told CNS the bomb went off in front of a restaurant, which he said was the probable target of the attack. The official said terrorists in Iraq have often targeted restaurants because an explosion there "causes many victims and much damage."
Archbishop Fernando Filoni, apostolic nuncio in Baghdad, told Vatican Radio Jan. 29 that it was "clear that destabilizing the country is one of the key characteristics for whoever wants to leave the people in chaos."
The nunciature and five Christian churches were in the vicinity of six bombs, five of which exploded within a half-hour period.
A bomb planted close to the Chaldean church, St. Mari, in Kirkuk caused the most damage with three people dead and one injured, according to news reports. The other blast in Kirkuk was not far from the Syrian Orthodox church of Sts. Peter and Paul, Latin-rite Archbishop Jean Sleiman of Baghdad told CNS. Six people were injured in that attack according to a Jan. 29 report by the Italian-based missionary news agency, AsiaNews.
On the outskirts of Baghdad, a car bomb was found and safely disabled near the Chaldean church of St. Joseph, Archbishop Sleiman said.
But a bomb exploded near another Chaldean church in Baghdad and a different explosion hit a Seventh-day Adventist church in the center of the capital, the archbishop said. Neither attack caused any casualties.
Archbishop Sleiman said the problem with the Jan. 29 attacks was not the number of churches that were hit, but that the terrorist groups waging the campaign remain unknown.
"Words are useless and diplomacy is useless" when the enemy is faceless and nameless, he said. "We don't know who to turn to or talk to" to negotiate an end to the attacks.
The Jan. 29 attacks were the first against churches since parliamentary elections in December. The last series of attacks against Christian places of worship occurred in 2004 when a string of bombings hit churches in Mosul and Baghdad, leaving hundreds of causalities.
The effect of the bombings on the country's Christians has been "negative, devastating," Archbishop Sleiman said.
Fear of terrorist violence has forced many Christians to leave their homes as "immigration often seems the only way out of this inferno," he said.
The Christian exodus, however, "represents a danger" to Iraq's future since the country loses the talents and contributions of thousands of peaceful citizens, he said.
Despite the renewed wave of violence aimed against Christian places of worship, Patriarch Delly said the church in Iraq would persevere.
"We are children of hope," he said. "The Lord will help us and we will continue to live and maintain our beliefs and love our country."
You got it. Nothin' to negotiate about.
Let's see the Saudis go to the UN and ask for sanctions against people who blow themselves up near churches. Or how about the Saudis call for sanctions against themselves for banning the slightest practice of non-Muslim religions in their country.
Oh, I forgot, only the so-called ROP deserves respect in this NWO.
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