Baghdad church siege ends with 52 dead

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BAGHDAD – Iraqi security forces stormed a Baghdad church where militants had taken an entire congregation hostage for four hours, leaving at least 52 people dead, including a priest, Iraqi officials said Monday.
Code: 
             It was not immediately clear whether the hostages  died at the hands of the attackers or during the rescue late on Sunday  night in an affluent neighborhood of the capital.
             The incident began when militants wearing [suicide vests](http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101101/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq#)  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.
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101101/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq

The religion of pieces strikes again.
 
MugenOne said:
BAGHDAD – Iraqi security forces stormed a Baghdad church where militants had taken an entire congregation hostage for four hours, leaving at least 52 people dead, including a priest, Iraqi officials said Monday.
Code: 
             It was not immediately clear whether the hostages  died at the hands of the attackers or during the rescue late on Sunday  night in an affluent neighborhood of the capital.
             The incident began when militants wearing [suicide ](http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101101/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq#)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.
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101101/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq

The religion of pieces strikes again.
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May the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace.

As for your comment about the attackers’ religion, would you mind commenting also on the religion/religions of the rescuers?

Please let’s just respect those who died and not use the incident to make ideological points.
 
Jesus,our Lords peace be with all you readers.
That wos a day when angels in Heaven cryed. “Lord,let them rest in peace and may the eternal light shine upon them,They have no pain,no sorrow anymoore. Amen.”
 
seekerz said:
May the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace.

As for your comment about the attackers’ religion, would you mind commenting also on the religion/religions of the rescuers?

Please let’s just respect those who died and not use the incident to make ideological points.
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What religion were the rescuers?
 
seekerz said:
May the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace.

As for your comment about the attackers’ religion, would you mind commenting also on the religion/religions of the rescuers?

Please let’s just respect those who died and not use the incident to make ideological points.
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Died? Like car accident died? Or got run over by a bus died?

These people were murdered, because they were Christians, by people, because they were Muslims.
 
gilliam said:
Muslim
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I was actually being facetious with a somewhat rhetorical question. Has it been independently confirmed that the rescuers were Muslim, or was this a rather subjective assumption?
 
NotCrazyDan said:
Died? Like car accident died? Or got run over by a bus died?

These people were murdered, because they were Christians, by people, because they were Muslims.
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No.

Rephrase: these people, were murdered, (presumably) because they were Christians, by bad people who use their faith in Islam as a justification.

Big difference.
 
NotCrazyDan said:
Died? Like car accident died? Or got run over by a bus died?

These people were murdered, because they were Christians, by people, because they were Muslims.
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These people were murdered by a faction in a bloody civil war between Muslims, that resulted from the removal of a tyrant who had previously been forcing the two sides to live together. If Islam itself were the reason for this atrocity then how did this Church even exist to begin with or did Iraq just become Muslim in the last few days?
 
seekerz said:
If Islam itself were the reason for this atrocity then how did this Church even exist to begin with or did Iraq just become Muslim in the last few days?
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The people who committed the murder of 50 Christians in Baghdad, and more injured are the result of Muslim extremists.

From Vatican Radio:
“ 01/11/2010 12.03.10
No-where is safe anymore, not even the House of God”, says auxiliary Bishop of Baghdad of the Chaldeans, Shlemon Warduni, the day after an unprecedented attack on the Christian community of the Iraqi capital. Together with Patriarch Delly he visited survivors and wounded of the Sunday massacre, in which over 50 hostages and police officers were killed when security forces raided a Baghdad church to free more than 100 Iraqi Catholics held hostage by al Qaeda-linked gunmen. Between 70 and 80 people were seriously wounded, many of them women and children.
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The terrorists, some wearing suicide vests, had taken over 120 faithful hostage at the Syriac Catholic Church of Our Lady of Salvation, one of Baghdad’s largest, during Sunday mass and demanded the release of al Qaeda prisoners in Iraq and Egypt. “This tragedy represents a new and terrifying change in strategy by terrorists” said an anonymous source from the Catholic community in Baghdad, “it means all Christian parishes in Iraq are in danger”. An Iraqi affiliate of Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack. It said in a statement posted on radical Islamic websites that it was an action against the Coptic church in Egypt.
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Archbishop Georges Casmoussa, the Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Mosul notes “what we are asking for and we repeat this appeal, is that our governors and the international community push to bring peace to Iraq and push for the formation of a responsible government, so there is some authority over the situation here in Iraq”. **Church leaders have long warned that the political vacuum created by the failure to agree on a government formation following March elections has left the door open to increased extremist infiltration and insecurity. “The ultimatum of these terrorists, [for the release of AL Qaeda prisoners and the formation of an Islamic state in Iraq –ed] is not our problem it is for other people to deal with”, continues Archbishop Casmoussa “Our problem is insecurity in our country. We are not against anyone. If they want an Islamic government, if they want power then they should try to obtain it by instilling confidence in the population, not fear”.
** [emphasis mine]
Bishop Warduni adds that “the Christian community no longer feel safe, not even in the House of God, this attack will have a very negative influence on those who until now had chosen to remain in Baghdad, with many saying they are ready to leave”.
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One of the first victims of the terrorist were the priests who had been leading the congregation in Sunday celebrations. “I knew them both very well” says Bishop Warduni, “They were former students, both very young, both very committed to their vocation and community”. “This whole episode is truly sad and really very painful, but we must have hope and trust in God that he will protect his Church”. Emer McCarthy reports
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I wonder how NPR will spin this story to make the dead Christians the villains and the murdering Muslims the righteously offended parties.
 
Orogeny said:
See post #10. It is Bush’s fault.

Peace

Tim
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Actually, since you didn’t ask, I don’t think this was Bush’s fault. Individuals and groups are directly responsible for whatever actions they condone or participate in. I do think the present power vacuum in the country creates conditions that favor such acts of violence. Nature abhors a vacuum of any kind. Did Bush’s policies favor creation of that vacuum? I think so, but Saddam wasn’t going to live forever anyhow so it would have eventually happened anyway…besides, Bush was hardly in this alone; support for invading Iraq was probably inversely proportional to support for the bank bailouts.

The real point of my post was: Iraq has been majority-Muslim for who knows how long and Christians and Jews have survived and worshiped there for generations without being blown to bits. So this is obviously about more than who belongs to what religion.
 
Christianity’s been almost completely eradicated from the entire middle east. I guess this has nothing to do with the fact that Islam’s been in full control of it for almost a millennia.
 
NotCrazyDan said:
Christianity’s been almost completely eradicated from the entire middle east. I guess this has nothing to do with the fact that Islam’s been in full control of it for almost a millennia.
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The majority religion almost invariably suppresses the minority ones and in the eastern hemisphere most notably (to my knowledge at least) this may involve, in addition to outright violence - intimidation, social pressures, population dynamics, assimilation and migration patterns… to name the more obvious forces at work. Any combination of the above or of other influences which I have failed to mention, are likely to explain the phenomenon you mention, though I would not use the term “almost completely eradicated” without the support of nation-specific statistics.
 
Not too long ago, there were over 18 million Assyrian Catholic in Iraq. Today, there are about 300,000 in Iraq. Their numbers are getting smaller because of the religion of pieces’ tolerance. Today’s news is one of many examples of Islamic tolerance and it will not stop until the Muslim land is pure.
NotCrazyDan said:
Christianity’s been almost completely eradicated from the entire middle east. I guess this has nothing to do with the fact that Islam’s been in full control of it for almost a millennia.
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MugenOne said:
Not too long ago, there were over 18 million Assyrian Catholic in Iraq. Today, there are about 300,000 in Iraq.
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There certainly has been an exodus of Iraqi Catholics during the past decade. But I think the decimal point got left out of that first number.
 
this is horrible. but they are in heaven as they shed their blood for their faith. so i suppose there is a silver lining.

maybe we should take a hard look at all of the feel good talk in the vatican ii texts and interpret them in the light of tradition which doesn’t speak so nicely about islam. dialogue with islam and with the world has made the church weaker in my opinion.

where is the islamic outrage? former president bush and all of the warmongers are partly to blame for this. he and his administration were too naive to put it nicely to protect the minority christians in iraq once the coalition forces left. he was too stupid to listen to the JPII and B16.
 
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