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.
PHOTO: AFP
"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.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
At a calligraphy class in Hanoi, Hoang Thi Thanh Huyen slides her brush across the page to form the letters and tonal marks of Vietnam’s unique modern script, in part a legacy of French colonial rule. The history of romanized Vietnamese, or Quoc Ngu, links the arrival of the first Christian missionaries, colonization by the French and the rise to power of the Communist Party of Vietnam. It is now reflected in the country’s “bamboo diplomacy” approach of seeking strength through flexibility, or looking to stay on good terms with the world’s major powers. A month after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) visited,
RSS