The Iraqi government yesterday blamed al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for a series of church bombings that killed at least 11 people, saying the aim was to spark religious strife and drive Christians out of the country.
Muslim leaders condemned the car bombings that were timed for Sunday evening services in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul. The attacks were the first on churches of the minority Christian community since the start of a 15-month insurgency.
"There is no shadow of a doubt that this bears the blueprint of Zarqawi," said national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie.
"Zarqawi and his extremists are basically trying to drive a wedge between Muslims and Christians in Iraq. It's clear they want to drive Christians out of the country," he said.
The Jordanian-born militant has claimed responsibility for a series of major car bombings in Iraq since former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was ousted last year as well as the killing of foreign hostages.
An Islamist Web site yesterday showed photographs of what it said was the killing of a Turkish hostage by a group linked to Zarqawi. But a Somali held by militants also linked to Zarqawi is to be freed after his Kuwaiti employer agreed to halt operations in the country, alJazeera television said.
Rubaie said Iraq's national security council was to hold an emergency meeting yesterday to discuss the blasts that hit at least five churches in the country, including four in Baghdad.
The bomb attacks near the four Baghdad churches killed 10 people and wounded more than 40, the US military said, adding the blasts occurred within a 30-minute period.
Witnesses and officials had said earlier that as many as 15 people had been killed, including at least one person killed by a bomb at a church in Mosul.
The US statement gave no details of casualties from Mosul. It said Iraqi police had found and cleared an explosive device that contained 15 mortar rounds outside a fifth Baghdad church.
Christians account for about 3 percent of the population of Iraq, where attempts to provoke conflict have mainly focused on Sunni Muslims and members of the Shiite Muslim majority, who were oppressed by Saddam.
There are 800,000 Christians in Iraq, most of them in Baghdad. Several recent attacks have targeted alcohol sellers throughout Iraq, most of whom are Christians of either the Assyrian, Chaldean or Armenian denominations.
Adnan al-Asadi, a senior member of the Shiite Dawa Islamic party, said Muslims shared the pain of the Christian community.
"We reject these criminal acts which want to create religious and sectarian strife in Iraq," he said.
"We do not differentiate between these acts which are in violation of religious and Islamic laws because the perpetrators of these acts ... are the same people who strike Iraqi mosques and centers for the internal security forces," he said.
Iraqi Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin said the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi was trying its best to combat the insurgents and uproot their networks.
"This shows there are no borders to the barbarity of the crimes of these terrorists," he said in response to the attacks. "No believer of any religion would do this."
Parish priest Bashar Muntihorda, speaking outside a Chaldean church in Baghdad that was hit, said Christians were devastated.
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