BAGHDAD, Aug 1 (AFP) - Six car bombs exploded on Sunday outside churches in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul, killing at least 10 people, in a lethal, coordinated assault on Iraq`s Christian minority, medics said.
Police and medics confirmed a death toll of 10, six of whom perished when one of the bombs exploded inside a huge church and seminary compound in southern Baghdad, causing massive damage.
A rescue worker at the Al-Dura compound said he pulled out six dead women and two dead children from the debris.
Another witness said he had clawed three dead women out of the rubble, but there was no immediate confirmation from medics.
Dozens of wounded were admitted into hospitals as the explosions unleashed chaos on the capital`s streets at the end of evening mass in the first attacks targeting Christian places of worship in Iraq since the April 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein.
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.
Thick black smoke billowed in the sky above Karada, clearly visible for miles, as ambulances screamed through the streets and firemen battled to contain the blaze.
The ravaged Al-Dura compound resembled a war zone. The car exploded as worshippers were leaving the church following mass, said an AFP correspondent at the scene.
"I went in right after the explosion to help with the dead and injured. I pulled out three women who were dead, before Iraqi police chased me away," said witness Shaker Mahmud, 32.
Beige metal gates, just under two metres (seven feet) high and imprinted with two crosses, were open when the bomb went off. The force of the blast hurled parked cars into the compound, flipping them upside down. The windows of the church were shattered.
"Six women and two children were killed," said Alaa Andreas, a rescue volunteer.
Officials at the Ibn al-Nafeez hospital said 16 people had been admitted with injuries following the attacks. One of them later died, said Anas Edward, a doctor.
Six people with horrendous burns were treated at the al-Kindi hospital and another six at the capital`s neurosurgical hospital. Both hospitals each reported one person killed, officials said.
The Yarmuk hospital received six dead from al-Dura, as well as five wounded, officials said.
Police reported a fourth explosion in Baghdad, outside a Chaldean Catholic church in the east of the city.
Nervous Iraqi police officers fired into the air around the sites of the explosions as US helicopters circled above and American soldiers deployed in force around the besieged churches.
"It`s a crime. It`s Sunday, we were at mass. There were a lot of women and children," said Bishop Raphael Kutami at the Syriac church.
"There are so many injured and we don`t know how many. We were coming out of the church" when the bomb exploded, said another priest at the same church.
A US military spokesman confirmed "at least four explosions" went off in the central Baghdad area early Sunday evening.
In Mosul, 370 kilometres (230 miles) north of the capital, two car bombs exploded in the early evening outside the Mar Polis church in the central Mohandessin neighbourhood, said Major Mohammed Omar Taha.
Medics there said one person was killed and 15 wounded in the bombings.
In Kirkuk, police said an explosion went off at around 7:45 pm in a Christian neighbourhood, but said there were no casualties because most people were at church.