Blast Near Church in Kirkuk, Iraq, Injures 13

The damaged interior of the Holy Family Syrian Catholic Church after an early-morning car bomb attack in Kirkuk on Tuesday. (AP Images/Emad Matti)

A car blast outside a Syrian
Catholic church in Kirkuk, Iraq, Tuesday morning left 13 wounded as
police located and disarmed two more car bombs targeting churches in the
city, according to area sources.

Online video images of
the attack against the Holy Family Church showed one of its walls
blasted open and all its surfaces covered with broken glass, rubble and
dust from the entrance where the explosion took place to the sanctuary
on the far end of the building. The explosion occurred on the second day
of the month-long Muslim fasting period of Ramadan.

Nearby
houses in one of Kirkuk’s oldest quarters, where Muslims and Christians
had lived together peacefully, were seriously damaged, and cars on the
street were left in twisted piles of metal. Shattered glass wounded 13
residents as they slept, area sources said.

“We are sad
because this is nonsense, and people are discouraged,” the archbishop of
Kirkuk, Monsignor Louis Sako, told Compass. “We try to encourage them
and give them hope. We have asked the mayor-governor to help the
families that lost their houses and cars before thinking to restore the
church.”

Today all but one of the wounded residents in the
church’s neighborhood—an elderly man who was seriously injured—reportedly had been released from the hospital. The Rev. Imad Yalda, the
parish priest, was in the church building at the time of the blast and
was also slightly wounded.

Though Yalda and the community
were sad about yesterday’s events, a local pastor who requested
anonymity told Compass such attacks have become a normal part of the
lives of Christians in Iraq.

“He accepted what happened,
but he was very sad for the building of his church,” the pastor said.
“But this has become ordinary for us, and we expect that any minute
something will happen here. When you are living in this situation, you
are used to accept what is happening.”

No terrorist or
extremist group has taken responsibility for yesterday’s attack in
Kirkuk, and local church leaders said it seems Christians in Iraq are
trapped in a senseless game of power and intimidation.

“Sometimes
we feel there is some pressure over the Christians all over Iraq to
make them leave their cities and go to the northern part of Iraq, to
Kurdistan,” said the pastor, “but who knows? I can’t say those who did
this want us to leave our city.”

Sako said the
perpetrators, whether they are Islamic extremists with anti-Christian
motives or terrorists with political motives, are trying to create an
atmosphere of confusion by attacking Christians during the Muslim holy
month of fasting, Ramadan.

“They are using this to shock
people,” said Sako. “They are getting the attention of politicians in
Kirkuk and in Iraq and saying, ‘We are here and powerful, and we can do
whatever we want.’ It’s just confusing—[they want to] say they are
here and create a chaotic situation and make a panic among the people.”

Car Bombs Defused
Authorities
also located two other cars full of explosives in the area. One was
parked in front of the church building of Mar Gourgis, of the Assyrian
Church of the East. A school is located next to the church building.

Another
vehicle packed with explosives was parked in front of a Protestant church in the neighborhood. When the church pastor and others in the
neighborhood heard the blast at the Holy Family Church at 5:30 a.m.,
they came out to see what had happened.

In front of the
Protestant Church complex they saw a suspicious car filled with
containers of gas. Before noon, special forces confirmed the car was
full of explosives and disarmed it. In the process there was a small
explosion that broke 21 windows of the church complex.

Kirkuk’s
Christian leaders said they fear more Christians will decide to migrate
abroad after this attack. The Protestant church that was targeted
yesterday has 70 members, of which nine will be leaving the country in
the next two months, according to its leaders. Yet they hope that
Christians will remain in Iraq.

“We continue to witness to Jesus Christ and our Christian values; we are not afraid,” Sako said.

 Kirkuk, 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Baghdad, is a culturally diverse city with about 10,000 Christians.

There
have been at least 45 abductions in Kirkuk since the start of the year,
with most victims coming from well-to-do families, Agence-France Presse
(AFP) reported last month.

A special report prepared for
U.S. Congress last month stated that Iraq’s security is declining and is
less safe than it was a year ago.

AFP also reported that
June was the deadliest month in Iraq so far this year, with 271 people
killed in attacks according to a government count.

A
Baghdad court found four men guilty of “planning and preparing” an
attack on the Syrian Catholic Church of Our Lady of Salvation last
October in which 58 people were killed. The judge handed three
perpetrators the death sentence and a 20-year jail term to another,
according to The Associated Press. The men, whose names authorities did
not release, have one month to appeal.

Last year’s attack
was the deadliest one against the country’s Christians since Islamic
extremists began targeting them in 2003. On Oct. 31, during
evening mass, al-Qaida suicide bombers stormed the church building and
held some 100 worshipers hostage for hours after detonating bombs in the
neighborhood and gunning down two area policemen.

The
militants sprayed the sanctuary with bullets and ordered a priest to
call the Vatican to demand the release of Muslim women whom they claimed
were held hostage by the Coptic Church in Egypt. When security forces
stormed the building, the assailants started to kill hostages and
eventually blew themselves up.

It is estimated that more
than 50 percent of Iraq’s Christian community has fled the country since
2003. There are nearly 600,000 Christians left in Iraq.