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Iraqi Christians targeted by Christmas Day bomb attacks

1,823 views · Published 26 January 2014 · 0:35 · Indexed 21 September 2026

Channel: News Direct · 2014 · News & Politics

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Originally published on December 26, 2013 

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At least 34 people were killed in multiple bombings across the Iraqi capital on Christmas Day (December 25), Reuters reported. The bombs and car bombs targeted mostly Christian neighborhoods.

Dozens of worshipers were killed after a car bomb detonated just after worship services at the Mar Youhanna Church, while a second car bomb exploded near a market street in a Baghdad neighborhood that has a large number of Christian residents. 

Sectarian violence has picked up this year across Iraq. Christians, already a tiny minority in Iraq, have been one of the targets of Al-Qaeda-linked militants, but the Shiite majority has been the most frequently targeted group, with religious pilgrims targeted at holy sites across Iraq. 

In the last week alone, bombs have hit a bus carrying religious pilgrims in the city of Kerbala while in the cities of Tikrit and Ishaqi, police officers were shot and a bomb exploded on a football pitch killing four. 

The UN reports that sectarian violence in 2013 has claimed the lives of more than 8,000 people and there are serious concerns that Iraq is heading towards another period of mass bloodshed such as that seen during the sectarian conflict of 2006-07 that left tens of thousands dead. 

Reuters also reported that the U.S. embassy in Baghdad issued a statement condemning the bombings, calling the attacks on Christians, "deliberate and senseless."  Iraq once had a thriving Christian minority, but after the U.S.-led invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein, Christians have fled the nation in droves as terror attacks increased.

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