Iraq churches targeted

Early reports say at least 12 people have been killed in one of the blasts and many more wounded in an apparently coordinated attack timed to coincide with Sunday evening prayers.

The first car was detonated by a human bomber near an Armenian church in Baghdad's upmarket district of Karada, said policeman Haidar Abdul Hussein.

Minutes later, a second car bomb exploded near a Catholic Syriac church.

With the blasts coming so soon after each other officials have been unable to provide accurate casualty figures, but one senior Iraqi official said he expects "huge numbers".

Thick black smoke billowed in the sky above Karada, clearly visible for miles, as ambulances screamed through the streets and firemen battled to contain the blaze.

Officials at the Ibn al-Nafeez hospital said 15 people had been admitted with injuries following the attacks. One of the 15 later died, said Anas Edward, a doctor.

Another police officer at the scene said there were casualties, but was unable to specify how many.

Nervous police officers fired into the air and an AFP correspondent saw the gutted shells of the two cars lying in the streets.

A US military spokesman said "at least four explosions" went off in the central Baghdad area early on Sunday evening.

In Mosul, 370km (230 miles) north of the capital, two car bombs exploded outside a church in the early evening outside the Mar Polis church in the central Mohandessin neighbourhood, said Major Mohammed Omar Taha.

"There are casualties, but we don't know if anyone was killed," he said.

Aljazeera + Agencies

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/16309172-57E8-49B4-ADD6-172904C5EC27.htm

Bombs have gone off near four churches in the Iraqi capital and one in the northern city of Mosul, police say.
At least 10 people are reported killed and dozens of others injured in what seems to be a new tactic by insurgents.

The first blast occurred outside an Armenian church in Baghdad, and three other churches were hit soon after in what looks like an orchestrated attack.

A blast was reported around the same time in Mosul, where a police station was bombed earlier in the day.

Witnesses said a car bomb detonated outside an Armenian church as an evening service was getting under way.

It blew out stained glass windows, and scattered pieces of hot metal across the street. The wreckage of at least three burned out cars was left in its wake.

"I saw injured women and children and men, the church's glass shattered everywhere. There's glass all over the floor," Juliette Agob, who was inside the church at the time, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying.

Attack targets

Ten minutes later, as the emergency services raced to the scene, a second blast went off outside a Syrian Catholic church some 400 metres (yards) from the first church.

An ambulance driver said two people had been killed.

At around the same time, a suspected car bomb went off outside a church in the northern city of Mosul.

"It's a crime. It's Sunday, we were at mass. There were a lot of women and children," Bishop Raphael Kutami at the Syrian church was quoted by AFP news agency as saying.

"There are so many injured and we don't know how many. We were coming out of the church," when the bomb exploded, said another priest at the same church.

The BBC's Peter Greste in Baghdad says that until now there has been no significant attacks on Iraqi's Christian minority, although they were becoming increasingly concerned about the possibility of violence.

Many Christians run Iraq's alcohol shops, which have been subjected to recent attacks.

Earlier on Sunday, at least five people were killed and some 50 injured when a car bomb went off near a police station in Mosul.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3526084.stm

IRAQ'S CHRISTIANS
Used to number 1 million
Now estimated at 650,000 - about 3% of population
Main communities: Chaldean Catholics, Assyrian
Other rites include: Armenian, Syrian Orthodox, Syrian Catholic, Anglican
Mainly live in Kirkuk, Irbil, Mosul, Baghdad