Seventh church bombed in Iraq within 48 hours

|PIC1|A Chaldean Christian church in Iraq was bombed Monday, injuring three children in the latest violent act against a Christian house of worship, Iraqi officials said.

An Iraqi Interior Ministry official said Monday's bombing, the seventh since Saturday; occurred when a car bomb exploded and damaged the church in Mosul, CNN reported.

A coordinated attack on six Baghdad-area churches on weekend killed four and wounded 32 others, officials said.

The deadliest attack came on Sunday evening at around 7 pm near a church on Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad. A police officer at the scene said three Christians and one Muslim were killed. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media, the Associated Press reports.

According to CNN, the first bombing took place on Saturday night at St Joseph's church in western Baghdad. Two bombs placed inside the church exploded at about 10 pm. No one was in the church at the time of the attack.

Bombs explosion followed on Sunday afternoon outside two churches in central Baghdad's al-Karrada district and one in al-Ghadeer in eastern Baghdad, wounding eight civilians, the official said. In southern Baghdad's Dora district, a bomb outside a church wounded three other civilians.

Most of the churches were damaged in the bombings, according to video footage posted on CNN website.

"This is going to make the Christians scared," Bishop Shlemon Warduni, who was in his office in a Christian church in Baghdad bombed Sunday, told the Los Angeles Times. "They will be scared to come to services, and maybe more will leave the country."

Iraq's Christians, believed to number about one million, are a small minority in a mainly Muslim country of about 28 million people. Christians have sporadically been the target of attacks, particularly in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul, leading many of them to flee abroad.