Monday, November 1, 2010

CHURCH SEIZED: MUSLIM EXTREMISTS KIDNAP 50 CATHOLICS, AT LEAST 37 DEAD

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Residents attend Sunday mass at a Roman Catholic church in Baghdad. Iraq's government called on Muslims not to attack the country's small Christian minority in response to remarks by Pope Benedict that have angered Muslims. REUTERS/Mohammed Ameen.
Misunderstanders of Islam strike again. Horrible. Expect the media to report  it every which way but the truth. Jihad.
Iraq church















Ahmad Al-Rubaye  /  AFP -
Getty Images file


 Iraqi Chaladean Catholic Christians  celebrate Easter mass at the church of Virgin Mary in central
 Baghdad's  Al-Karrada neighborhood on  March 23, 2008. The same church was the site of a
 four-hour seige on Sunday.
By Waleed Ibrahim and Muhanad Mohammed
A siege by Iraqi security forces at one of Baghdad's largest Catholic
churches ended on the night of October 31, leaving at least 37 people dead and
twelve injured. 

A group of gunmen wearing suicide vests walked into the Syrian Catholic Church
of Our Lady of Salvation during Sunday Mass. They held more than 50 parishioners
hostage for several hours and threatened to kill them if al Qaeda prisoners were not
released. 

The siege was finally broken on that evening when Iraqi security forces stormed the church.
Iraqi spokesman Major General Qassim al-Moussawi claimed that five gunmen were killed
during the rescue operation as well as one policeman a parishioner and one of the priests
celebrating Mass.

The Christian community in Iraq has suffered persecution since the war. 
Many thousands have fled abroad. In this case it is still not known why the church was targeted.
Some reports suggest that the gunmen had first planned to attack the nearby stock exchange.
Christian clergy and lay people have been kidnapped, murdered, and raped by
Muslim terrorists and criminal gangs in Iraq, sparking the exodus of Christians
from the country.
[...]
Iraq's Jews, who had lived in the region since the time of Abraham and during their
Babylonian Captivity, were expelled in the 1940s and 1950s following the infamous
pogrom known as The Farhud. Sparked by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, one of
the lead Muslim religious men of the region, Muslims went on a killing spree
in Baghdad and elsewhere during the Second World War having allied themselves
with the genocidal Nazi war machine in the Mideast's version of the Holocaust.
More on Hitler's partner The Mufti of Jerusalem