Churches Attacked In Iraq

A series of coordinated explosions rocked churches in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul on Sunday in the first attacks targeting the country's Christian minority during the violent 15-month insurgency to oust U.S.-led forces in the country.

Two explosions just minutes apart shook separate Baghdad churches during Sunday evening services, and two other blasts struck outside a church in Mosul at roughly the same time, Iraqi officials said.

The U.S. military confirmed two other explosions in Baghdad on Sunday evening, but their target was not immediately known.

U.S. military officials said at least one and possible both of the blasts appeared to have been booby-trapped cars in the city's Karada neighborhood.

U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police patrolled the area as emergency workers raced to evacuate the wounded.

The first blast hit outside an Armenian church just 15 minutes into the evening service, witnesses said. The second blast hit a Catholic church about 200 yards away.

"I saw injured women and children and men, the church's glass shattered everywhere. There's glass all over the floor," said Juliette Agob, who was inside the Armenian church during the first explosion.

Massive plumes of black smoke poured into the evening sky over the city as firefighters struggled to put out the flames. U.S. helicopter gunships circled above the scene.

Firefighters and residents struggled with water hoses to put out the flames, which leapt from the front of a tan colored church and several blackened, destroyed cars.

The blasts followed a night of clashes between U.S. troops and insurgents that killed 12 Iraqis and wounded 39 others in the troubled city of Fallujah.

In other developments:

An al Qaeda-linked group gave Italy another 15 days to withdraw its troops from Iraq before sending "waves of earthquakes to erase your country," according to a statement sent to an Arabic newspaper Sunday. It was the fourth threat in two weeks against the key American ally. The statement, signed by the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades and sent to the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, followed the expiration of a three-month truce purportedly made in April by Osama bin Laden to European states. The statement urged the Italians to remember the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist bombings in the United States and the bombs in Madrid last March.

Newsweek reports a commission investigating the Abu Ghraib prison abuse is expected to assign some responsibility to senior civilian officials at the Pentagon, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld is expected to take heat for failing to provide adequate numbers of properly trained troops for detaining and interrogating captives in Iraq and Afghanistan, sources tell Newsweek.

U.S. authorities released 128 prisoners from a detention camp at Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, bringing the total number of detainees released since January to 7,000.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said Sunday that any Muslim and Arab forces sent to Iraq must be a replacement of coalition troops there. Saud said Iraq must request such a force "with the full and clear support of the Iraqi people." He said this force would operate under the umbrella of the United Nations and "will replace the coalition troops currently in Iraq, and not be in addition to it." He added, "The troops from Arab and Muslim nations sent to Iraq will not be similar to the current troops. They don't come as invaders or occupiers. They will go there to help the Iraqi people," said Saud.

Northwest of Baghdad, insurgents detonated a bomb that wounded four U.S. troops, who shot dead one attacker, the military said Sunday.

In central Baghdad, guerrillas set off a roadside bomb Sunday that killed two civilians and wounded at least two others, said Fawad Allah, an officer at Karradah police station. A driver for the British Broadcasting Corp. received non-life-threatening wounds to the head, the BBC's Baghdad bureau chief said. The blast sent plumes of black smoke rising above Abu Nawas street, on the eastern banks of the Tigris River.

Earlier Sunday, a suicide car bomb attack outside a police station in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, killing at least five people and injuring 53 others, police said.

The 8 a.m. attack in Mosul began when a white four-wheel drive vehicle sped toward barriers at the Summar police station, prompting a police guard to open fire and kill the driver, the police and U.S. military said.

The vehicle crashed into the concrete barriers around the station and exploded, just as the police were going through a shift change.

The bomb killed at least five people, including three police, said AbdelAzil Hafoudi, an officer at al-Salam hospital. He said 53 people were also wounded, among them 8 police.

Insurgents have been pressing a campaign to destabilize the interim government despite last month's transfer of sovereignty from the U.S. occupation authority. About 160,000 coalition troops, mostly Americans, remain in Iraq.

"We were expecting such terrorist attacks against us," said Abdella Zuheir, a policeman at the scene. "This is a cowardly act."

Witnesses said the police station was also damaged, along with five cars and several nearby shops.

The blast left a three-yard-wide crater and spread shattered glass and debris across the road. The engine of one car, presumably the bomb, was laying in the road. One policeman sat outside the station weeping.

In Fallujah, 12 people were killed and 39 wounded during fighting late Saturday and early Sunday in the eastern part of the city, a Health Ministry official said on condition of anonymity. The U.S. military said it had killed 10 assailants during the clashes.

Huge explosions were heard in Fallujah overnight as U.S. forces briefly entered the edge of the city, residents said. Clashes occurred on the eastern edge of the city and U.S. helicopters fired up to eight rockets into an industrial area, they said.

The U.S. military said assailants firing mortars, machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades "repeatedly attacked a position held by Marines," who returned fire with tanks but suffered no casualties.

"The fire was directed at enemy fighters in civilian attire observed firing several hundred meters (yards) away," the statement said.

Coalition aircraft dropped guided bombs on a building in an industrial zone, from where "at least 20-armed men were observed firing," the statement said.

In an earlier round of fighting in Fallujah that ended Friday, U.S. forces said they killed 20 Iraqi insurgents.

Elsewhere, four U.S. 1st Infantry Division soldiers were wounded when guerrillas attacked their patrol in Samarra, northwest of Baghdad, with a roadside bomb just before midnight Saturday, said military spokesman Maj. Neal O'Brien.

The patrol returned fire, killing one of the attackers in a palm grove, he said.

Two children suffering shrapnel wounds — it was unclear whether from the same blast or another — were taken by U.S. troops to a nearby coalition hospital. They later died of their wounds, O'Brien said.

In other violence, two policemen were killed and three injured when their truck was attacked by insurgents in Haswa, 40 miles south of Baghdad on Saturday, police Lt. Ali Aubeid said.

A roadside bomb along a southern Baghdad highway killed one man Sunday and injured two others, said police Lt. Col Assad Ibrahim Hameed.

Meanwhile, two Turkish companies said Sunday they might stop doing business in Iraq in order to secure the release of two Turkish truck drivers whose abduction was announced in a video released Saturday.

In the video, the Tawhid and Jihad group of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi demanded the Turks' employers leave Iraq or it would behead the men in 48 hours.

The companies, Oztur International Transportation and Kahramanli Transportation, issued a joint statement saying they might pull out, the Anatolia news agency reported.

"The important thing for us is the return of both drivers unharmed," Omer Ozturk, an official of the Oztur International Transportation, said in reading the statement.

The company identified the drivers as Abdulrahman Demir and Sait Unurlu and said they were transporting cupboards and beds for the U.S. military in Iraq.

Militants loyal to al-Zarqawi have claimed responsibility for a number of bloody attacks and beheadings of previous foreign hostages, including U.S. businessman Nicholas Berg, South Korean translator Kim Sun-il and Bulgarian truck driver Georgi Lazov.