As killings increase, church official says all of Iraq is in danger

Published: 2006-02-23

ROME (CNS) -- As killings increased in retribution for the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Iraq, the Rome-based representative of Baghdad's Chaldean Catholic Patriarchate said all of Iraq is in danger. "It's not just about Sunni and Shiite, because they started three weeks ago on Christians," said Father Philip Najim referring to the near-simultaneous attacks in late January in Baghdad and Kirkuk, a northern Iraqi city, launched just as some Sunday services had ended. Father Najim said he believed the people behind the mid-February attacks "came from outside Iraq and they (coalition forces) are doing nothing about it." He said that as an Iraqi, he could assure people "100 percent that no Iraqi man would ever do this. Not a Sunni, not a Shiite." The people behind the mid-February attacks "want to create division and chaos. They want to stop the process of a new political situation" of democracy and peace, Father Najim said, adding that he did not understand what U.S. and British forces were doing to help keep order. "Before we can talk about a constitution and democracy, we have to bring stability and unity," he said. "Instead, there is Iraq being divided and creating different camps. Each group is like a country in itself" with its own leader, people and army.

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