On August 1, 2004, a series of car bomb attacks took place during the Sunday evening

Mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...

in churches of two Iraqi cities,

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...

and

Mosul Mosul ( ar, الموصل, al-Mawṣil, ku, مووسڵ, translit=Mûsil, Turkish: ''Musul'', syr, ܡܘܨܠ, Māwṣil) is a major city in northern Iraq, serving as the capital of Nineveh Governorate. The city is considered the second large ...

. The six attacks killed at least 12 people and wounded at least 71. No one claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Iraq's national security adviser,

Mowaffaq al-Rubaie Mowaffak Baker al-Rubaie (alternative transliterations Muwaffaq al Rubaie and Muwaffaq al-Rubay'i) ( ar, موفق الربيعي, Muwaffaq ar-Rubayʿī) is an Iraqi politician, and was Iraq National Security Advisor in the government of Prime Minis ...

, blamed the attacks on

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ( ar, أَبُو مُصْعَبٍ ٱلزَّرْقَاوِيُّ, ', ''Father of Musab, from Zarqa''; ; October 30, 1966 – June 7, 2006), born Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh (, '), was a Jordanian jihadist who ran a t ...

. The bombings marked the first major attack against the Christian community since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Attacks

The attacks happened within a few minutes of each another. The rigged cars were parked outside churches and detonated when parishioners were leaving services. Only one of the bombings is believed to have been a

suicide attack A suicide attack is any violent Strike (attack), attack, usually entailing the attacker detonating an explosive, where the attacker has suicide, accepted their own death as a direct result of the attacking method used. Suicide attacks have oc ...

. The witnesses reported that "body parts were scattered across the area". Of the six bombs, one did not explode and the police was able to remove it safely. In Mosul, hospitals reported two persons killed and 15 wounded. One of the bombed churches the ''Our Lady of Salvation'' Syriac Catholic

cathedral A cathedral is a church that contains the '' cathedra'' () of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually specific to those Christian denomination ...

was the same church that was attacked with hostages taken and killed on October 31, 2010.

Responsibility

Al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attacks on an Islamic website. Iraq's national security adviser,

, blamed the attacks on

Reaction

A Vatican spokesman, Rev. Ciro Benedettini, called the attacks "terrible and worrisome". The

Pope The pope ( la, papa, from el, πάππας, translit=pappas, 'father'), also known as supreme pontiff ( or ), Roman pontiff () or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome (or historically the patriarch of Rome), head of the worldwide Cathol ...

"firmly deplored the unjust aggressions against those whose only aim is to collaborate for peace and reconciliation in the country". The

Russian Orthodox Church , native_name_lang = ru , image = Moscow July 2011-7a.jpg , imagewidth = , alt = , caption = Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, Russia , abbreviation = ROC , type ...

issued a statement saying "the attacks were an attempt to spark a religious conflict."

Muslims Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abraha ...

around the country condemned the attacks. In a statement to

Al-Jazeera Al Jazeera ( ar, الجزيرة, translit-std=DIN, translit=al-jazīrah, , "The Island") is a state-owned Arabic-language international radio and TV broadcaster of Qatar. It is based in Doha and operated by the media conglomerate Al Jazeera ...

television, a spokesman for Muqtada al-Sadr said: "This is a cowardly act and targets all Iraqis". Ali al-Sistani issued a statement in which he wrote: "We stress the need to respect the rights of Christians in Iraq and those of other religious faiths and their right to live in their home, Iraq, peacefully." Although only comprising about three percent of the population, Iraqi Christians make up 20% of Iraqis leaving the country as refugees. After 2004 churches bombing, which was the worst act of violence against Christian minority by that time, a member of Christian community, Layla Isitfan, in her interview with ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' correspondents said: "If I can't go to church because I'm scared, if I can't dress how I want, if I can't drink because it's against Islam, what kind of freedom is that?"

References

External links

Pictures of 2004 Church Bombings in Iraq
* ttps://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/03/world/reach-war-religious-coexistence-leading-muslim-clerics-iraq-condemn-bombing.html THE REACH OF WARbr>Iraq - New crackdown on Christians
{{DEFAULTSORT:Iraq Churches Attacks, 2004 2004 murders in Iraq 21st-century mass murder in Iraq 2004 in Iraq Car and truck bombings in Iraq Terrorist incidents in Iraq in 2004 Terrorist incidents in Baghdad Christianity in Baghdad Christianity in Mosul Islamic terrorist incidents in 2004 Mass murder in 2004 Religiously motivated violence in Iraq 2004 Iraq churches attacks Attacks on religious buildings and structures in Iraq Building bombings in Iraq Church bombings by Islamists

Attacks

Responsibility

Reaction

See also

References

External links