Posted on 10/16/2004 5:39:00 AM PDT by notkerry
Bombs exploded near five churches around Baghdad on Saturday morning followed by a mortar attack near a sixth church, causing damage but no casualties, officials said.
"There were five explosions caused by improvised bombs near to these churches," said Colonel Adnan Abdelrahman, an Iraqi interior ministry spokesman.
In an apparently coordinated strike against Iraq's tiny Christian community, the church of St Joseph in the west of the Iraqi capital was hit at about 4:00am (local time), the spokesman said.
Twenty minutes later, another blast ripped through the streets at another St Joseph church, in Dora, southern Baghdad.
After another 20 minutes, St Paul's church was struck in the same area.
At 4:50am, the Orthodox church in the central district of Karrada was rocked by a blast and a fifth occurred about an hour later at the St Thomas church in Mansour to the west.
"The buildings were damaged but no one was hurt," Col Abdelrahman said.
The violence resumed hours later when a mortar round was fired into a car park between a hotel and St George's Anglican church, witnesses said.
"There were no injuries," said Tassin Ali, a security guard who had been sitting at the front gate to the hotel.
The mortar round struck directly opposite the church but it was unclear whether it had been the target, an AFP reporter said.
About five cars were damaged in the blast.
Iraq's Christian community has been heavily targeted in the unrest that has swept Iraq following last year's US-led invasion.
At the start of August, four attacks against Christian targets in Baghdad and two others in Mosul left 10 people dead and 50 injured.
There are only about 700,000 Christians in Iraqi, or 3 per cent of the country's population of some 24 million people, which is majority Muslim.
One medic was killed and nine others wounded when a mortar round exploded outside a hospital in Baghdad, just after an artillery shell struck near a church down the road, officials said.
"The mortar landed in the garden of the hospital," said Hashim Mohammed, a security officer at the Ibn el-Bitar hospital.
The hospital deputy said one person was killed and nine wounded, all of them staff.
Meanwhile, a US soldier died of wounds sustained in a car bomb attack in Iraq's northern city of Mosul, according to the US military.
It said the military convoy was attacked in an eastern area of Mosul on Friday afternoon.
Now, all of the American people need to show how strong of Christians we are. All of our church leaders need to start a collection to help rebuilt these churches and we need to build them bigger than the Mosques.
CALLING ALL AMERICAN CHRISTIAN MINISTERS, LETS HELP IRAQ REBUILT THESE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES.
Pew shows these numbers but I find the figures misleading. The behadings have not been good for islamics' popularity except maybe among the loonies among us...notwithstanding Yusuf Islam...yecch!
I am not unaware of your pointed remarks and I agree with the substance of what you write. I realize that certain forces in Washington and the world help maintain a grip against unleashing an all out war against islam. But I cannot see how such an all out aggression could solve the sickness of islam...do you kill the patient or do you try to salvage him? Having said that, I am under no illusion that another attack God forbid will provoke us into far more agressive stance.
As for Clinton/Holbrooke/Albright and Yugoslavia v Communist machine...because that is what it was...not Serbia and not Orthodox, - that was an aberration that would not have ocurred if the Republicans had been in the WH I think. A fiasco and another tragedy for the West.
BTW - there was no motivation to attack Hitler in the 30s. In fact, there was a mutual admiration society among the despots Hitler and Stalin, with Roosevelt and many of his Democrat cronies acting strangely like despots themselves. Not until Pearl Harbor and the pact with Britain in 41 did the US finally enter the war. This President has been far more preemptive in preventing another Hitler by going into Iraq now instead of after millions had died as in WWII.
Sadie...This is a wonderful idea...spread the word.
yup,the silent night sounds of ramadan
I WILL, YOU DO THE SAME. PLEASE...LET'S ALL DO IT. WE NEED TO DO THIS BECAUSE PEOPLE NATURALLY TURN TO CHURCHES FOR HELP AND IF THESE PEOPLE HAVE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES TO TURN TO THEN THEY WILL BEGIN TO SEE THAT WE ARE NOT BAD AT ALL.
But that's not where the spears will break. Serbs are a small nation of 12 million people, one third of whom are scattered in various newly formed countries in the region. We are looking at one billion Muslims in the world. Unlike Christianity, Islam is growing because it appeals to basic human desires veiled in a slave-like mentality of being a "tool" in God's hands.
The real problem, which no one is willing to admit and which most can't even see, is our policy vis-a-vis Israel, a country that has enjoyed our repeated UNSC vetoes, and is in violation of over 60 passed UNSC resolutions. It's own independence, proclaimed in violation a UN resolution but supported by the US unilaterally, sparked the Arab-Israeli conflict that has been going on for over 50 years and is engulfing the world in an all-out jihad.
The bombings of the churches in Baghdad are only an indication that our presence in Iraq is seen as a Crusade, and I don't have to tell you that behind that Crusade most Muslims see Israel pulling the strings. They see us as Israel's convenient cannot futter, willing to die so Israel can live. As far as they are concerned, it's a Judeo-Christian alliance dedicated to dominate the Muslim world, an our Evangelical zealots are the food for that view.
You may not agree, I really don't care if you do or not, but this is the impression hundreds of millions of Muslims (and growing by the day) have and they believe it. We have been unable to force, buy or decree peace in the Middle East. We have bought several regimes whose life expectancy is not guaranteed -- the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan and Egypt. That did not stop the conflict, nor did it stop it from spreading. Today may be too late to stop the jihad, even if the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is solved (by some miracle, of course). I honestly believe that the American people are not being told the truth about why we are targetted by Islam, as the American people were not told about the real reasons to go to war in Iraq (although the reasons were shown to be dubious right from the start -- that is if you if you don't get your news from Fox & Retards, and don't fall for the folly of believeing everything the politicians say). Neither this nor any other Administration will spill the beans.
Fighting terrorism is one thing. Fighting one billion Muslims is an altogether different story. We are not preventing fires; we are desperately trying to do damage control. If we are safer today, think about it next time you are pumping gas.
As for Israel - you know what teh Muslims think? The Crusader states lasted about 150 years or so. They were powerful at first but they could not long stand up to the onslaught of the jihad. That is why the PLO dod not make a final deal. Why should it since it will retake the Holy Land eventually. Israel has Nuclear bombs? So what? Islam has a billion martyrs that will not care if a dozen cities of a few million vanish overnight. That is how Muslims think - we must know how Muslims think to defeat them - if such a thing is possible.
Maybe it's because he really beieves we are NOT at war with Islam, in other words he's rational.
You give Muslims too much credit...the only unity they cling to is the unity that appears against the perceived slights to their own by Israel and by alliance - the US.
More Muslims have been killed by their own than by any western aggression. They know that and fear that the most. This is their weakness: as an ideology spurred on by envy and psychologically twisted meanderings of their so-called leader/s, Muslims cannot possible win anything in the face of a united West.
Since the "end" of the Cold War, the west has not been united and certain elements in the Muslim world have exploited this disunity. The remnants of the KGB were planning this "insurgency" long before their demise knowing that the fifth column existed in various and sundry third way types and socialists including the Greens. Their creature has come back to sting them and the muslim former Communist despots of central Asia are scrambling to defend themselves.
Islam is only dangerous because the Western Left continues to back their insurgencies. And Islam's tools have been the willing fools of the 90s and before. Bush is completely aware of all this but cannot accomplish his goals without reforming the State Dept. and ridding it of the neocons. It is our job to re-elect him and give him a veto proof majority in Congress.
"And Islam's tools have been the willing fools of the 90s and before. Bush is completely aware of all this but cannot accomplish his goals without reforming the State Dept. and ridding it of the neocons. It is our job to re-elect him and give him a veto proof majority in Congress."
Now THAT and your tagline I can agree with!
"Oh, I don't think we are at war with Mohammedanism, but I do think Mohammedanism is at war with us."
We are at war with a sect(?) of Islam. It cuts across the usual Shia/Sunni divide, and looks back to a golden age (One IMO that was completly different than what they imagine)
"And we've taken American and coalition casualties because we've chosen to fight the war on the Iraqi and foreign terrorists' terms rather than our own."
How would you fight this war?
"But I do think that to the extent that anyone thought that the Iraqis would greet us with kisses and flowers and Mustafa Adams and Abdul Jefferson would spring up out of the desert to create a new shining city on a hill were not only irrational, they were delusional."
A year after the end of our war of independence it was in doubt that Adams, Jefferson..etc. would be able to make this work.
Iraqi Pro-Democracy Party
http://english.iraqdemparty.org/
"All out, were I to ask young Americans to fight and die."
Sounds good but, what makesyou think we're not? And just what do you mean by "all out"?
Oh, come on! Adams, Jefferson et al were the products of an Hellenistic Christian society....
True, but given that what they were trying to do had never been done before it could very easily failed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.