BAGHDAD — In a wave of coordinated attacks aimed at Iraq's Christian minority, a series of bombs exploded Sunday outside five churches thronged with worshipers here and in the northern city of Mosul, killing 11 people and injuring dozens more.
It was the first time in this nation's 15-month insurgency that Iraqi Christians were targeted, further fraying the country's delicate religious fabric and raising fears of increased sectarian conflict.
Attackers timed some of the blasts for maximum effect, during evening services that attracted hundreds of faithful. Bloodied and dazed, churchgoers spilled onto streets littered with shards of stained glass and splinters of wood as smoke billowed above them.
"I was praying inside the church with all these people when all the windows shattered," said Father Rafael Kutaimi of an Assyrian Catholic church in Baghdad's Karada neighborhood, where a car packed with explosives blew up during the 6 p.m. service. At least a dozen worshipers were wounded.
"They came into a holy place," Kutaimi said of the attackers, as bystanders scurried away from U.S. armored vehicles that had rolled to the scene. "If they're against the Americans, let them kill the Americans. We're all Iraqis, innocent people. I don't know what their goal is."
Within an hour, four churches were hit in three neighborhoods in the Iraqi capital. The Iraqi Ministry of Health said early today that 11 people had died and 52 were injured.
In perhaps the deadliest of the attacks, twin blasts struck the Chaldean Patriarchate in southern Baghdad, killing a child and at least four other people as churchgoers began arriving for Mass around sunset. Witnesses said they saw two men pull up in separate cars, park them near the church, then casually walk away before the vehicles exploded, hurling debris as far as 100 yards.
The church served as a bomb shelter during last year's U.S. invasion, and local residents, Muslims and Christians alike, banded together to protect it from looters. "We have all lived here in peace for a long time," said Ali Abdulla, 28, who rushed from his house across the street to help the injured.
Around the same time as the Baghdad explosions, at least one car bomb went off outside a church in Mosul, incinerating a passing motorist and wounding four other people. The toll could have been higher if all the mortar shells in the car had detonated, police said.
