- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Explosions
damaged churches in Baghdad on Saturday and the U.S. military reported
the deaths of four more American troops in bomb attacks elsewhere in Iraq.
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- A suicide car bomber killed three U.S. troops, along
with an Iraqi civilian, in Qaim near the Syrian border on Friday. The fourth
died after a car bomb blast in Mosul the same day.
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- A mortar attack on Qaim killed four Iraqis and wounded
30 on Saturday, a local hospital doctor said.
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- In another challenge for the U.S.-backed interim government,
a group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi vowed to attack
foreign trucks bringing petrol and diesel into Iraq.
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- Five churches were hit in a string of bomb attacks before
dawn that seemed designed to intimidate the country's small but deep-rooted
Christian community, already shaken by a deadlier series of bombings of
churches that killed 11 people in August.
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- "If they don't want us in Iraq, let them say it
and we will leave," said Samir Hermiz, 40, standing by a Catholic
church reduced to ashes. "I'm really thinking of leaving Iraq."
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- Iraq's 650,000 Christians, about three percent of the
population, are mostly Chaldeans, Assyrians and Catholics.
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- The U.S. military has accused Zarqawi of carrying out
bombings aimed at fueling sectarian strife and civil war.
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- Some Iraqis say Washington exaggerates the threat from
Zarqawi to disguise the strength of Iraq's homegrown insurgency.
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- Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group claimed responsibility
for Thursday's suicide bombings that killed up to four Americans in the
heart of Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, seat of the government and home
to the U.S. and British embassies.
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- © Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
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