In Iraq, Christians come out to worship

For one brief hour Monday, it felt like Christmas.

Ladies with lace veils over elegantly coiffed hair and men with squirming youngsters in their laps filled pews at the Church of the Virgin Mary in Baghdad’s upscale Karada neighborhood.

A small choir accompanied by an electric organ sang carols in Arabic, and the musky smell of incense filled the sunlit hall.

Christians, a small minority in Iraq, have fled the swell of violence in large numbers, reducing one of the world’s oldest Christian communities to a shadow of its once-vibrant self. Those who remain are often too afraid to venture from their homes to celebrate their faith together.

The Church of the Virgin Mary once drew hundreds of worshipers. Now, fewer than 20 show up for Sunday Mass, said Allah Fumia, a church volunteer who has attended services here for 24 years.

“We hear all the time that this person left, or that person got killed, or this person was kidnapped,” Fumia said. “It is reassuring to see that there is a community left.”

Another violent day

Outside, the bloodshed that has driven so many Iraqis to leave their country continued Monday, with more than 60 people reported killed in bombings, gunfire and other violence.

The U.S. military announced the deaths of six troops, bringing the number reported killed since the start of the Iraq war to 2,975, according to the website icasualties.org.

Roadside bombs killed four soldiers Monday in Baghdad and southwest of the capital, the military said. A soldier and a Marine died Sunday of injuries sustained in combat in Al Anbar province, west of the capital.

In Basra, the nation’s second-largest city, British forces used tanks and explosives to destroy an Iraqi police station belonging to the Serious Crimes Directorate. British troops said they had freed about 180 detainees from the building who were about to be executed.

Capt. Tane Dunlop, a spokesman for the British military, said the directorate had “become a criminal establishment where its detainees were being tortured.”

Last week, British forces detained a member of the directorate thought to be involved in a death squad.

Most of Iraq’s bloodshed has been between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, but Christians have been targeted as well.

Insurgents have characterized the U.S.-led war in Iraq as a crusade against Islam. Some have vented their anger on Christians, who make up about 3% of Iraq’s 26 million people. Churches have been bombed and clergy abducted.

In October, a priest was beheaded in the northern city of Mosul after comments by Pope Benedict XVI quoting a 14th century Byzantine emperor who linked Islam’s teachings to violence further inflamed militant anger.

Christians have also been targeted for selling alcohol, which is forbidden under Islam.

The United Nations recently estimated that about 3,000 people left Iraq each day, and that about 40% of them were Christians.

Many who remain decided to celebrate Christmas quietly at home this year, or joined relatives abroad for the holiday. But some of those who braved the trip to church were surprised by how many people they found.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, “it was so crowded that some people were forced to sit on the steps or stand in the street,” said photographer Dawood Yousef, who attended Mass with his wife and two children at Sacred Heart Cathedral. “But there is no happiness on any of the faces that I saw this morning.... We are in perpetual fear from explosions, attacks and kidnapping.”

About 300 people attended the Church of the Virgin Mary in Baghdad, but the turnout was considerably smaller than in previous years, when worshipers spilled onto the stairs and into the courtyard.

“I get choked with tears when I think about what it was like before,” said Mohanad Najib, who dressed up his 3-month-old son Zaid in a Santa Claus suit from his gift shop for the occasion. “This church used to be full of people. Now everyone is gone.”

‘No Christmas here now’

A contingent of armed police officers kept a watchful eye over the Christmas morning service. There was no tree or Nativity scene, and Baghdad’s curfew had made midnight Mass impossible. When the service was over, worshipers exchanged quick hugs and kisses before hastening home.

One family of latecomers was horrified when it arrived to find everyone gone and the church doors closed. A lingering volunteer let them in for a quick prayer.

“There is no Christmas here now,” said the mother of two, too afraid to give her name.

Police in Baghdad recovered 40 unidentified bodies in the 24 hours ending Monday night, apparent victims of sectarian death squads. Police in Kut, 100 miles southeast of the capital, pulled three bodies from the Tigris River, two of them already decomposing.

A car bomb ripped through a busy shopping street in a Shiite-dominated east Baghdad neighborhood, killing 10 civilians and injuring 11 others, police said. Charred cars and broken glass littered the area.

Another bomb exploded on a bus headed for the largely Shiite Sadr City district, killing at least two people and injuring 20, police said. There were conflicting reports about whether the attack was the result of a suicide bomber or a device planted on the vehicle.

Mortar rounds slammed into another Shiite-dominated neighborhood in north Baghdad, killing two people, police said.

West of Baghdad, a suicide bomber detonated explosives strapped to his waist at the entrance to Al Anbar University in Ramadi, a center of insurgent violence. A student and a police officer were killed, and five police officers were injured.

Gunmen killed a police officer and a civilian in a series of attacks south of Baghdad, police said, and the body of an abducted police officer was recovered north of the capital with gunshots to the head and chest.

zavis@latimes.com

Times staff writers Said Rifai and Raheem Salman in Baghdad and special correspondents in Baghdad, Hillah, Basra and Mosul contributed to this report.