including 35 children, and injuring scores of others, amid reports that tens of thousands of Iraqi Christians have fled the country because of the apparently escalating violence.
The allegedly coordinated explosions occurred Thursday afternoon, as a U.S. military convoy passed the scene of a ceremony to open a new water and sewage treatment plant, reporters said.
Elsewhere, four Iraqis were reportedly killed and 16 others wounded in a car bombing in the northern town of Tal Afar. The Associated Press (AP) news agency said the bombing targeted a local police chief, who survived the blast.
Earlier, a suicide car bomb blast killed one U.S. soldier and two Iraqi policemen near the Abu Ghraib prison just outside the capital, the Voice of America (VOA) reported. Separately, the U.S military was quoted as saying one coalition soldier was killed and seven others wounded in a rocket attack on a base outside Baghdad.
The attacks have been links to Islamic militants from within Iraq and neighboring countries as well as remnants of the old regime of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein and they have added to concern among the country’s up to one million Christians.
MILITANTS ACCUSE CHRISTIANS
Muslim militants have accused Christians of supporting the US-led coalition and several of them have been killed or otherwise threatened for working with the military. The latest attacks also kept foreigners, including missionary workers on edge, a day after Italy celebrated the release of Italian charity workers Simona Pari and Simona Torretta by Muslim kidnappers.
Iraqi Christians are also kidnapped, said a Christian businessmen from Baghdad who fled with his family to Jordan, the Religion News Service (RNS) reported. As he attended Mass in Jordan’s capital Amman, he recounted how militants allegedly linked to renegade Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al Sadr recently kidnapped and tortured him until his family paid ransom money.
"A gang came to my shop with machine guns and forced me into a car where I remained for nine days," the businessman said. "They wanted $200,000 from me. They repeatedly hit me and poured boiling water all over my body. I was held hostage until my family paid them $50,000 to finally get me released."
WALKING WITH CANE
The man, in his mid-fifties, now walks with a cane and burn marks are visible on his body, an RNS reported observed.
RNS said tens of thousands of Christians like him are estimated to have fled Iraq in recent months, apparently for fear that they will become favorite targets of Muslim extremists, following recent church bombings and individual attacks.
In Jordan, Iraqi refugees mainly go to their church communities upon arrival for needed aid, such as housing and food. The priest of the Latin Catholic church in Amman’s Hashimi district, the Rev. Raymond Musili, told RNS that the figure of recent arrivals from Iraq was about 7,000 at his church alone.
Meanwhile in Syria, the United Nations Refugee Agency in Damascus said some 4,000 Iraqi Christians have sought refuge in the country. However other Christian sources said 40,000 Christians have fled Iraq in recent times.
CLIMATE OF FEAR
But even with the growing climate of fear in Iraq, there are stalwart Christians who choose not to leave their homeland, RNS said. A small group of Pentecostal Christians visited Amman recently from Baghdad and reported that their church is growing, despite pressures.
Yet pastor Ghassan Thomas, of the Evangelical Alliance Church in Baghdad, challenged Christians earlier to continue to preach the gospel in this hurting nation.
"Before one month, I went to Jordan and a lot of Iraqi people came to me and said: ‘Why can you say that Iraq is wonderful when there are people killed on the street and there is no security?’ I answered: ‘Because the people need Jesus Christ at this time.’"
Now, he told BosNewsLife, is "the perfect time to speak about Jesus Christ."
