Most were killed when a car bomb exploded in an outdoor market in the mainly Shia Amil district, in the south-west of the city, and medics said many of those killed and wounded were women and children.
The blast came as Christians were already anxious amid reports that kidnappers have demanded a six digit dollar ransom for the release of a Chaldean Priest, Father Nawzat Hanna, who disappeared over the weekend. Church officials have refused to specify the amount as negotiations continue.
Hanna, a 38-year-old parish priest of Mar Pithion, was leaving the house of an ill parishioner early Saturday, May 19, when he was stopped by a group of persons who had been waiting for him, Baghdad’s Auxiliary Bishop Shlemon Warduni of the Archdiocese of Babylon said.
"HUMILIATING" SITUATION
"We cannot go on living like this, it’s inhuman, and it’s humiliating. We will pray for his immediate release, but we will not submit to fear," he said in a statement.
Hanna is reportedly the sixth Chaldean priest to be kidnapped in Baghdad during the past year. All were eventually released, apparently after ransom money was paid.
Bishop Warduni told reporters the Chaldean Patriarchate was in close contact with the kidnappers. "They phoned us, they want money and we cannot say anything else," Compass Direct News agency quoted him as saying. Besides money motives, the suspected Islamic militants apparently use the kidnapping to create fear among Christians.
In Baghdad’s Dora neighborhood, for instance, over 190 Christian families have already fled following threats that they must convert to Islam or leave, church officials say. "The majority of them have been asked to leave Dora without taking any of their stuff, even their clothes,” Chaldean priest Bashar Warda told Compass Direct News.
MORE THREATS
Other districts are reportedly facing similar threats as groups subscribing to creating an "Islamic state in Iraq" have been seen putting up posters demanding that women wear the veil and impose "protection taxes" on Christians.
The Christian minority in Iraq is among the oldest in Christendom, experts say. Before war broke out, four years ago, there were an estimated 750,000 Christians, most of them Chaldeans, an oriental rite Catholic community, as well as other groups and evangelicals, but many of them have fled.
Hundreds of thousands of Christians are now staying in Jordan and Syria and of the perhaps 200,000 still staying in Iraq, many have been displaced within the country after fleeing Baghdad and southern parts of the nation, church sources say.
Bishop Warduni said however that his community would "not be bowed by fear. We will continue to make our voice heard and to denounce this tragedy which is the Iraqi people and above all the Iraqi Christian’s daily reality". (With reporting from Iraq and BosNewsLife Research).
