Updated on
Summary
In Baghdad, Iraq on Monday all the gunmen who stormed a church, seizing dozens of Iraqi and threatening to kill them were killed when the Iraqi police raided the church and ended the stand-off.Minister of Defence Abdul Qader al-Obeidi who supervised the operation with Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim al-Moussawi and a number of Iraqi military commanders said that most of the hostages were rescued and all the attackers were killed, but he stopped short of giving numbers. The US military said between seven and 10 hostages and seven members of the Iraqi security forces, as well as seven attackers, were killed in the rescue operation. Most of the people who were attending the mass were rescued and the operation was carried out with high efficiency. Witnesses reported seeing many bodies inside the church after the gunmen wearing suicide vests threw grenades or blew themselves up as Iraqi forces stormed the building. The insurgents laid siege to one of Baghdad's biggest churches as more than 100 parishioners attended Sunday mass in a central district near the heavily fortified Green Zone, home to embassies and the Iraqi government. US military officials watched the rescue operation from cameras in hovering helicopters. Violence has fallen sharply in Iraq since the height of sectarian bloodshed in 2006-07 but attacks by Sunni insurgents linked to al Qaeda and Shi'ite militia continue daily. Some police sources said they believed the initial target was the nearby Iraqi stock exchange, a bourse that lists a couple dozen local companies.
