The Assyrian Democratic Organization
Rescuers in Baghdad lifted blackened corpses on Christmas Day from the ruins of a suicide truck bombing the previous evening that killed eight people, further unnerving Iraq’s embattled Christian community.
A giant fireball ripped the wealthy Mansur district in Baghdad on Friday a few hours after Christmas Eve mass was held in the late afternoon rather than at night due to fears of just such an attack.
On Saturday morning, an AFP correspondent saw five bodies being lifted from the rubble of houses destroyed when the fuel tanker, manned by a suicide bomber, blew up in the neighborhood, home to Christians and Muslims alike.
Corpses, wrapped in pink blankets, were carried out as flames still leaped from the rubble and the frame of the charred truck smoldered.
Police said eight bodies were recovered from the blast, but that the body of the bomber had not been recovered.
“My house was destroyed. Five of my security guards were pulled out dead and two others are still buried under the ruins,” said Ahmed Mushraq, in shock, who had moved away from his home but had hired guards to watch the premises.
The rear of the tanker landed on the Libyan embassy’s gate, and windows at the front of the building were smashed in.
It was not known if the attack targeted the embassy. The Jordanian embassy was hit by a car bomb in August 2003 and other diplomatic missions have also been targeted in rocket and mortar attacks.
At Yarmuk hospital on Saturday morning, the wounded, ranging from tiny girls to middle-aged men, lay in hospital beds, some with third degree burns, their blackened faces puffed and their arms dangling listlessly.
The bloodshed put Christians, already jittery, on a knife’s edge as they feared the possibility of a Christmas Day attack.
The coordinated bombings of five churches in Mosul and Baghdad in August killed 10 people and sent notice to the dwindling community of 700,000 that they were being targeted by insurgents.
Supressing their fears, some 80 Christians had braved the streets to attend an early Christmas Eve mass on Friday.
“Despite the threats, my husband and I have come. I will not let the terrorists intimidate me and make me shirk my religious duties,” said Maha, a 50-year-old lawyer, at the heavily guarded Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.
Christmas Day was bleak in much of Iraq, with a small church in northeastern Baquba shutting down rather than risk a surprise bombing by insurgents.
In the southern port of Basra, the main Chaldean church was packed as its priest, Father Qassab, told about 200 worshippers: “We are not celebrating Christmas, we are praying for Iraq.”
Mass took place in the oil centre of Kirkuk but with armed guards vigilantly watching the streets from the church’s cream-coloured bell tower.
In Vatican City, Pope John Paul II expressed “great apprehension” on Saturday over the situation in Iraq.
Speaking from a rain-slicked St Peter’s Square, the 84-year-old pontiff called for an end to “the spread of violence in its many forms, the source of untold suffering.”
He added: “With great apprehension I follow the situation in Iraq.”
Elsewhere, the Iraqi police chief in Najaf accused the Syrian government on Saturday of involvement in last weekend’s deadly bombing that killed 52 people in the Shiite pilgrimage city.
One of three suspects arrested in Najaf immediately after the attack “confessed that Syrian intelligence services had played a role in the blast,” said General Ghaleb al-Jazairi.
And two insurgents with links to Iraq’s most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, have been arrested in the turbulent city of Ramadi, the US marines said on Saturday.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, visiting US troops in Iraq on Friday, painted a bleak picture of Iraq ahead of the much anticipated January 30 elections but vowed America would prevail over a tenacious insurgency.
He has been lambasted at home over the revelation that he did not personally sign condolence letters to relatives of troops killed in Iraq and over his perceived indifference to the shortage of armour for military vehicles.
Rumsfeld’s first stop was in the main northern city of Mosul, where a suicide attack on a US army base killed 22 people on Tuesday. The attack has resulted in a top-to-bottom review of base security in Iraq.
Brigadier General Richard Formica, who previously probed the abuse of detainees in Iraq, has been appointed to investigate the attack, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hastings told AFP.
The US military announced it had arrested 34 people and thwarted a car bombing in Mosul in the aftermath of the deadliest attack ever on Americans in Iraq.
Back in Fallujah, fighting erupted on Friday for a second straight day as residents sought to return home after last month’s massive US-led assault to restore government control over the city which had been under rebel control since April.
Many of those who ventured in said they would not stay in a “ghost city.”
The marines said 1,400 people had so far ventured back to the neighborhood of Al-Andalus, in a test run for opening more districts. Long lines of cars to enter the city moved slowly on Saturday.
In other developments, a US army historian has concluded that the military invaded Iraq without a formal plan for occupying and stabilising the country and that this high-level failure continues to undercut army efforts there, The Washington Post reported on Saturday.
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