BAGHDAD (ABP) — Five Christian churches in Iraq were bombed Sunday, Aug. 1, in a coordinated attack, which was condemned by Christian and Muslim authorities.
The attacks in Baghdad and Mosul killed at least seven people, according to the Associated Press, and marked the first major attacks on Iraq's minority Christians, who make up about 3 percent of the country's population of 25 million.
Many of the country's estimated 750,000 Christians have already fled Iraq, fearing they will be targeted as collaborators with American forces, the Washington Post reported. Most Iraqi Christians are Chaldeans, Eastern-rite Catholics who are autonomous from Rome. Others are Roman Catholic, Syriac Catholic, Orthodox (Greek, Syriac and Armenian), Presbyterian, Anglican or evangelical. Christians have been present in the region for 2000 years.
“We hope this cloud of fear will go away,” said Faris Thomas of St. Peter's Seminary in Baghdad, one of the targeted churches. “We try and tell [our people] that everything will be OK, but now that something has happened, it's changed everything,” he said, according to the Associated Press.
No group claimed responsibility for the church attacks — four in Baghdad and one in Mosul. The explosions came just minutes apart Sunday evening as church members gathered for services. The Iraqi Health Ministry counted seven killed and 37 injured. The U.S. military said 11 were killed.
Muslim clerics condemned the violence and also offered condolences to Iraq's dwindling Christian community.
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