4 dead and 171 injured is the result of a terrorist attack yesterday against a column of buses that was driving some young Christian students from their village of Qaraqosh to Mosul. The news was confirmed to SIR today by the Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, mgr. Emil Shimoun Nona, after the website Baghdadhope had published the news, yesterday, quoting the priest, father Rayan Atto of Erbil. The terrorist attack, explained the archbishop, “was caused first by an explosion, then by a car bomb parked on the roadside just before getting into town. The blast was devastating and killed 4 people and injured 171, with 17 in very serious conditions in the hospital of Erbil. The column drove through the area every morning to drive these young people, aged between 18 and 26, to the university of Mosul, and maybe that’s precisely why they were an easy target for the terrorists”. “This is the umpteenth terrorist attack against Christians – mgr. Nona stated –. Violence is going on relentlessly. The lack of power that has come into being after the election, the lack of a new government, the internal diatribes within the political parties are fertile ground for violence”. As reported by Baghdadhope, “the Christian population of Erbil and the neighbouring towns are going to the hospital to donate blood” to the injured people.

© SIr - 3 may 2010