Separate Church attacks plant fear in hearts of Iraqi Christians

Baghdad, Iraq – Car bombs at Baghdad churches and outside a hospital treating the victims of those attacks killed at least eight people and wounded dozens recently as a wave of blasts struck the Iraqi capital.

Early this month, a car bomb exploded outside St. George's Catholic church in southern Baghdad late evening, followed just minutes later by a second outside St. Matthew's church.

Victims from both blasts, some carried by injured friends or relatives in torn and bloodstained clothes, were rushed to Yarmouk hospital. A doctor reported that at least three people had been killed and 40 injured.

A few hours later, a suicide car bomber plowed into four police cars parked outside the hospital entrance, killing at least five policemen, police said.

In a separate attack, an explosion outside the Catholic St. Bahnam's Church in southwestern Baghdad wounded at least 35 people, police and hospital sources said.

The blast destroyed the outer wall of the church and set the house next door ablaze, witnesses said.

Police said a car bomb had detonated outside the church but witnesses said it appeared explosives were planted nearby.

Several more explosions echoed across the city later in the night, but there was no immediate word on casualties.

The wave of bombings swept Baghdad as U.S. Marines began their full–scale offensive to capture the rebel Sunni Muslim city of Falluja, 50 km (32 miles) west of the capital.

In the latest of almost daily bombings on the main road to Baghdad airport, at least three people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack on a checkpoint earlier in the day.

Rebels fighting Iraq's interim government and it's U.S. backers have stepped up attacks around the country since U.S. forces began building up for their assault on Falluja, seen as the epicenter of the insurgency.

Iraq's Christian minority has also been targeted. Five churches were hit in a string of bombings in October that seemed designed to intimidate the Christian community, already shaken by a series of attacks that killed several people in August.

Iraq's 650,000 Christians, mostly Chaldeans, Assyrians and Catholics, comprise about three percent of the population.