AFP, Brussels, Nov 1, 2010 – European Union foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton condemned Monday the killings of 46 Christians during an Al-Qaeda hostage drama in a Baghdad church.
Ashton said she was ’deeply saddened by the news of the attack against worshippers at Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad that killed and injured a large number of innocent civilians’.
Ashton said she ’condemns this unacceptable attack against innocent Catholic worshippers and expresses her deepest sympathies to the families and friends of the victims, and to the Iraqi authorities’.
Grieving Catholics in Baghdad marked All Saints Day Monday in mourning for the scores of Christians killed during the hostage drama that ended in an assault on Al-Qaeda gunmen by Iraqi forces backed by US troops.
Throughout the day mourners were seen carrying coffins out of the church and loading them onto vehicles for transfer to the mortuary. Most of the victims were to be buried on Tuesday.
The rescue drama on Sunday night, two months after US forces formally concluded combat operations in Iraq, ended with two priests among at least 46 slain worshippers.
Ashton said that ’in this difficult moment, the EU reaffirms its full support for the population of Iraq and calls on all Iraqi political entities to work together against the threat of violence’.
Before the US-led invasion of 2003, around 800,000 Christians lived in Iraq but that number has since shrunk to 550,000 in the face of repeated attacks against the community and its places of worship.