Baghdad church siege ends with 52 dead

***COMMANDER*** · 11-01-10, 09:55 AM

from JPOST Baghdad church siege ends with 52 dead
The incident began when militants wearing suicide vests and armed with grenades attacked the Iraqi stock exchange at dusk Sunday before turning their attention to the nearby Our Lady of Deliverance church — one of Baghdad's main Catholic places of worship — taking about 120 Christians hostage.

A cryptically worded statement posted late Sunday on a militant website allegedly by the Islamic State of Iraq appeared to claim responsibility for the attack. The group, which is linked to al-Qaida in Iraq, said it would "exterminate Iraqi Christians" if Muslim women in Iraq were not freed.

It also specifically mentioned two women in Egypt that extremists maintain have converted to Islam and are being held against their will in Egypt.

The Egyptian women are wives of priests that are believed to have converted to Islam to leave their husbands, since divorce is banned by the Coptic Church. One woman disappeared in 2004 and another in July of this year.

Egypt's Christians maintained they had been kidnapped and demonstrated for their release. Both were later recovered by police, denied any conversions and were then spirited away to distant monasteries.

In the message, the militants claim the two are still Muslim and they called upon the Vatican, which held a meeting earlier in October to discuss the fate of Christians in the Middle East, to release the women.

"We direct our speech to the Vatican and say that as you met with Christians of the Mideast a few days ago to support them and back them, now you have to pressure them to release our sisters, otherwise death will reach you all," the message said.

Very disturbing statements about religious factions.

**triggerhappy2005** · 11-01-10, 09:57 AM

Very disturbing statement about Iraqi special forces. Just a bunch of cowboys.

**Alundil** · 11-01-10, 10:23 AM

Originally Posted by triggerhappy2005

Very disturbing statement about Iraqi special forces. Just a bunch of cowboys.

Or perhaps they did the right thing by intervening? It appears, at least from this report, that most of the casualties/deaths occurred at the outset and not when the HRT (or Iraqi Special Forces) began their entry.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/wo...st/02iraq.html

Abdul-Kader Jassem al-Obeidi, the defense minister, said that most of the hostages were killed or wounded when the kidnappers set off at least two suicide vests as they took over the church.
...
Many of the survivors said the assailants killed most of the victims when they first stormed the church. Most of those who survived had sought shelter in a room at the front of the church barricaded by bookshelves, which the assailants were unable to enter.

An American official, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said security forces decided to storm the church after they believed that the assailants had begun killing hostages.