IRAQ: Car bombs exploded outside at least five Christian churches in Iraq yesterday, killing more than a dozen people and wounding many more in an apparently co-ordinated attack timed to coincide with evening prayers.
"We are expecting a huge number of casualties," an Interior Ministry source said. He said there had been four blasts at churches in Baghdad and two in the northern city of Mosul.
Police in Mosul said they knew of just one church attack there.
In the deadliest attack, a suicide car bomber drove into the car park of a Chaldean church in southern Baghdad before detonating his vehicle, killing at least 12 people as worshippers left the building, witnesses said.
The US military has said guerrillas opposed to the presence of foreign troops may try to deepen divisions between the country's diverse religious communities in their campaign to destabilise Iraq.
"It is terrible and worrying because it is the first time that Christian churches are being targeted in Iraq," said Vatican deputy spokesman Father Ciro Benedettini.
A US military spokesman said three of the four attacks in Baghdad were known to be suicide car bombings.
An explosion at the Armenian church in Baghdad shattered stained glass windows and hurled chunks of hot metal. Another bomb exploded 15 minutes later at a nearby Assyrian church.
"Worshippers were inside the church and during the service a bomb went off," said Shakib Moussa Jibrail, a Christian.
An ambulance driver told Reuters that two people were killed in the explosion at the Assyrian church and several wounded.
Col Mike Murray of the US army said at least 50 people had been wounded at the church, some seriously.
In Mosul, officials said at least one person was killed in a blast at a church and 15 wounded.
There are about 800,000 Christians in Iraq, most of them in Baghdad. Several recent attacks have targeted alcohol sellers throughout Iraq, the majority of whom are Christians of either the Assyrian, Chaldean or Armenian denominations.
Earlier yesterday, a suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle outside a police station in Mosul, killing at least five and wounding 53 in the latest strike against Iraqi security forces.
There were conflicting reports over the fate of three Indians, three Kenyans and an Egyptian taken hostage in Iraq this month and threatened with execution.
In Nairobi, Kenyan Foreign Minister Chirau Ali Mwakwere told a news conference that guerrillas had released the seven hostages. But their Kuwaiti employers and an Iraqi mediator negotiating their release said they were still in captivity.
Scores of hostages have been seized in the last four months and several have been executed.