47 hostages killed in Iraq church hostage drama

01 November, 2010 11:57

47 hostages killed in Iraq church hostage drama

The hostage crisis in a church in Central Baghdad came to an end following a five-hour operation by the Iraqi especial security and police forces. Throughout these operations, 47 hostages were killed and 62 others injured.

All eight gunmen who raided the church were also killed when Iraqi forces mounted an operation to rescue the hostages held in the Sayidat al-Nejat church in central Baghdad.

According to Shiite News, gunmen raided a church in Baghdad on Sunday afternoon and abducted all the individuals present in the church, who were mainly women and children.

8 killed, 18 wounded across Iraq

A new spate of violence in Iraq has caused the death of eight people and wounded more than a dozen others as the country experiences a bloody hostage-taking crisis.

Four Iraqi army soldiers were injured in a mortar attack in Mosul, the capital of the northern province of Nineveh, on Sunday.

â€œFour servicemen were wounded when a mortar shell landed on a headquarters of an Iraqi army contingent in the area of al-Haramat in western Mosul,â€ Aswat al-Iraq news agency quoted a security source as saying.

In Baghdad, a bomb explosion left five civilians wounded in the Tu’ma district in the capital’s southern Daura area. An explosive device planted close to a school in southern Baghdad’s Saydiya district targeted a police patrol, leaving three officers and a civilian injured.

Moreover, in Diyala province, a security guard of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s al-Dawa party lost his life in the provincial capital, Baqouba.

The incident occurred when a bomb attached to the car of two guards of Diyala’s former lawmaker, Taha Dir’a al-Saadi, exploded. The blast killed one of the guards and seriously wounded the other.

The deadliest incident, however, came when an explosive device went off close to a garage belonging to a police center in northern Iraqi capital of Baghdad, killing six policemen and wounding four others.

On Sunday, Iraq witnessed an unprecedented hostage-taking in the capital where scores of worshipers were trapped inside a church in central Baghdad.

After a day of conflicting reports, an Iraqi interior official on Monday put at 37 the death toll from the four-hour hostage-taking which came to its dramatic end after police intervention, AFP reported.

Fifty-six people were also injured in the incident, he went on to say.