At least 12 people were killed as five car bombs exploded in quick succession outside churches in Baghdad on Sunday and the northern city of Mosul, in an apparently targeted assault on Iraq’s influential Christian minority, police said.The first car was detonated by a suicide bomber outside an Armenian church in Baghdad’s upmarket district of Karada, said policeman Haidar Abdul Hussein. Minutes later, a second car bomb exploded next to a Catholic Syriac church.Shortly afterwards, a car bomb exploded inside a church and convent in southern Baghdad, causing massive damage and casualties.A suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle outside a police station in the northern Iraq city of Mosul, killing at least five people and wounding 53, in the second deadly bombing in the city in a week. Witnesses said the Toyota Landcruiser raced towards a police checkpoint as guards screamed at the driver to stop. When he didn’t, they opened fire, killing him. But the car ploughed on and detonated about 60 feet from the police station.The early morning explosion gouged a deep crater in the road.In Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded near a vehicle belonging to the BBC. Three passersby were killed and the driver of the BBC car was lightly wounded in the attack, which was thought to have targeted a nearby US patrol, not the media organisation.
