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http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2007/s07010157.htm

ASSIST News Service (ANS) - PO Box 609, Lake Forest, CA 92609-0609 USA
Visit our web site at: www.assistnews.net -- E-mail: danjuma1@aol.com

Monday, January 29, 2007

"Church Stoned and Damaged in Northern Turkey"

By Michael Ireland
Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

The Samsun Agape Church was damaged in a weekend attack.

ARTICLE SNIPPET: "SAMSUN, TURKEY (ANS) -- A Protestant church in the Turkish Black Sea Port city of Samsun was damaged by unknown assailants on Sunday, January 28.

Salem Voice Ministries News Service says the attackers stoned the two-story Samsun Agape House church building overnight and broke more than 10 windows.

"The attack was the latest against Christians in this predominantly Muslim country," Pastor Mehmet Orhan Picaklar, the priest of the Samsun Agape House told SVM News Service.

"There were no casualties, but this makes damage to Turkey. This attack depicts Turkey in a bad way before international public opinion," he said.

Pastor Mehmet Picaklar, priest of the Samsun Agape Church.
"It is the seventh or eight such attack over the past three years. Separately, I am constantly receiving death threats by e-mail" Picaklar said.

Picaklar said the church had moved into the building just two weeks ago. Uniformed police officers were deployed outside the church after the attack, according to the private Dogan news agency.

The attack came nine days after a Turkish-Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, was gunned down outside his office in Istanbul on January 19, provoking widespread condemnation."