than a dozen people across the country, nine of them in Baghdad, where four bombs exploded.
Police said the translator, identified as Khalid Ismail, "worked at the American base Delta" west of the city of Kut. It was not immediately clear which group was responsible for the abduction and what demands had been made.
The kidnapping was the latest setback for Iraq’s embattled Christian minority, which is increasingly facing attacks carried out by Islamic militants and remnants of the former Saddam Hussein regime, church sources and human rights groups say.
In one of the most recent attacks last week unknown assailants reportedly bombed the entrance of a Catholic church in Mosul destroying three sets of doors as well as windows in the church, monastery and guest house. The November 1 blast apparently ripped through the windows of the monastery chapel where Dominican priests were holding evening prayer, although no one was injured.
MASS CELEBRATED
The priests had returned to the church to celebrate mass on Sunday, October 29, after spending a week outside Mosul to avoid the city’s daily violence and possible kidnappings, news reports said. Priests from Mosul reportedly no longer wear their clerical robes on the street and rarely go out in public for fears of kidnappings. In October, a Syrian Orthodox priest was kidnapped and beheaded in Mosul, and a Chaldean church was attacked.
The attack came on the heels of reports that Christian teenagers have also suffered violence. Last month, a 14-year old Christian Assyrian, Ayad Tariq, from Baqouba was beheaded by militants while working his 12-hour shift maintaining an electric generator.
One employee who witnessed the events was quoted as saying that the insurgents beheaded Ayad after seeing that his Identity Document noted he was "Christian." Another teenager, 13-year old Asiya Ahmed remains jailed in the city of Dahuk, near the Turkish border, on trumped up murder charges, an international observer said.
GIRL JAILED
In a statement obtained by news website www.christianmonitor.org and BosNewsLife, the founder of The Father’s Field Ministries International, Mark Case, said he has learned that Asiya was arrested as part of attempts to halt her father’s attempts to distribute Bibles and Christian literature.
At least tens of thousands of Christians have fled Iraq in recent months. Up to 150,000 Iraqis have been killed since the 2003 invasion, and another 2,841 US soldiers also died. The latest casualties on Saturday, November 11, included six people who were killed when a car bomb and a roadside bomb exploded simultaneously in a market in central Baghdad’s Hafidh al-Qadi area, a security sources said. Over 30 people were injured.
Elsewhere two more roadside bombs in Baghdad reportedly left another two people dead and five wounded. Gunmen also shot dead an Iraqi intelligence officer in south Baghdad. Tahsin Ali Mahmud was ambushed as he was driving through Baya neighborhood, the French Press Agency AFP quoted a security source as saying.
MORE KILLINGS
In addition, a policeman and a woman were killed when gunmen attacked them in the city of Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, police said, adding that another civilian was similarly shot dead. A policeman was also shot dead by gunmen near the Iranian border in the town of Zarbatiya, 80 kilometers south of the city of Kut, police told AFP.
Police also recovered six bodies, including one of a woman, from in and around Baghdad. They were believed to victims of sectarian killings. Dozens of bullet-riddled bodies surface across Iraq every week, mostly in Baghdad where the Shiites and the Sunnis are engaged in a bitter sectarian conflict.
Nearly 100 people have been killed in the past four days as violence returned to Baghdad and other regions following a lull during the curfew imposed after former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death last week Sunday, November 5.
RECOMMENDATIONS EXPECTED
It comes as United States President George W. Bush and Democratic leaders in Congress say they are looking forward to the recommendations of a bipartisan panel on the future US role in Iraq, led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton.
The report was to be presented Monday, November 13. In his weekly radio address however Bush warned "America’s enemies" not to expect that the US will flee from Iraq, following the Democratic Party’s victory in last week’s congressional elections. "I have a message for these enemies: Do not confuse the workings of American democracy with a lack of American will. Our nation is committed to bringing you to justice, and we will prevail," he said.
On Friday, November 10, US generals signaled they are making their own reassessment of the course in Iraq after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s departure was announced. The Democrat Party’s national party chairman, Howard Dean, said Saturday, November 11, the election results show that voters "want changes" in America’s approach to Iraq and the broader war on terror, but he did not elaborate. (With BosNewsLife’s Stefan J. Bos and reports from Iraq).
