Al-Qaeda’s front group in Iraq is threatening more attacks on Christians after a bloody siege on a Baghdad church earlier this week.
The Islamic State of Iraq says in a statement released late on Tuesday that Christians were “legitimate targets” and that the “killing sword will not be lifted from ... [their] necks.”
The statement comes after 58 people were killed during a deadly siege on Sunday night when militants took some 120 people hostage in a Catholic church in Baghdad.
The militants had been demanding the release of Muslim women that it says are being held by the Coptic Christian church in Egypt. The insurgent group said its deadline for the women’s release had passed and that Christians are now legitimate targets wherever they can be hit.
The threat also came just hours after at least 76 people were killed and about 200 injured in a series of bombings targeting mainly Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad on Tuesday night.
At least 15 blasts, many of them caused by car bombs, prompted fears the violence heralded the second phase of an al-Qaeda attempt to incite sectarian chaos. The bombs detonated within 90 minutes of each other.
The most deadly incident took place in Sadr City, where 21 people were killed.
Hussein al-Saiedi, a resident of the Shiite slum, said: “They murdered us today, and on Sunday they killed our brothers the Christians. We were just standing on the street when we heard a loud noise, and then saw smoke and pieces of cars, falling from the sky.”
Security forces ordered shopkeepers to return home and closed down main roads in the east Baghdad, which is mainly Shiite. Apart from election days, Baghdad has not seen a city-wide curfew since late 2007.
The bombings came hours after a memorial service for some of the 52 hostages and security officers killed on Sunday. Since then, security chiefs and politicians had ordered extra protection around mosques and churches, fearing further attacks. Police and soldiers used loudspeakers to order residents to stay in their homes near known sectarian flashpoints.
The bombs exploded in 12 areas of the city, including a police station in Sadr City and a coffee shop in New Baghdad. Restaurants appeared to be prominent targets in other attacks, along with main roads and, in one case, a funeral tent.
The scale of the attacks and the ease with which car bombs were able to penetrate security cordons constitute a damaging blow for Iraq’s security forces, which have remained without effective leadership for eight months owing to the crippling political crisis that has seen politicians unable to form a government.
“This is pure al-Qaida,” an intelligence chief told the Guardian. “It’s back to like it was in the early days — around 2004.”
The officer said that the group had re-established training camps in Iraq.
“There are many places: farms, deserts, private residences,” he said. “Iraq is a big place, and it is easy to hide.”
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