Source: SIR
During the attacks that upset Baghdad yesterday, killing 127 people and wounding 500, the premises of the Chaldean Patriarchate have been damaged too. It was stated to SIR by mgr. Shlemon Warduni, patriarchal vicar to the Iraqi capital: “luckily it is only material damage, the nuns and the Patriarch were not at home when the bombs exploded. They had gone out to celebrate the Immaculate Conception. Doors, windows, glass were blown out and even the walls have been damaged”. The Patriarchate is located near the Courts of Law which accommodate the Court of Appeal, hit by the car bombs along with some government offices such as the Labour Ministry and the Welfare Ministry. The ways the yesterday’s attacks have been carried out resemble those of the attacks of 19th August and 25th October in Baghdad, which killed hundreds of people even then. Mgr. Warduni does not want to tell too much about the people who might have committed this new wave of attacks, even if he states: “the population believes they have to do with political interests in the run-up to the election of 7th March 2010. What remains are the great desperation, pain and dejection for the death that still persecutes all our people”.