Turkish Hostage Executed As Iraq Leaders Blame Al-Qaeda For Church Bombings

by Jennie Matthew
BAGHDAD, Aug 2 (AFP) - Iraqi leaders accused alleged Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi of plotting a string of church bombings in a crude attempt to incite religious hatred, as hooded gunmen executed a Turkish hostage in a grisly videotape posted on Islamist websites Monday.
US troops and Iraqi security forces meanwhile clashed briefly with Shiite militiamen in the central holy city of Najaf, after surrounding the home of wanted radical leader Moqtada Sadr, who led an uprising against the US-led occupation earlier this year.
In the spine-chilling video footage, Turkish cleaner Murat Yuce was shown being blindfolded and shot three times in the head by his kidnappers as they shouted Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest).
Two more bullets were fired into the victim`s head after he fell, slumped in a pool of blood, in the latest in a string of gruesome killings of foreign hostages that has begun to sap post-war reconstruction efforts in Iraq.
In response, a major Turkish truckers` organisation announced it was stopping transporting goods to US forces in Iraq.
In Sunday`s bombings, at least 10 people were killed and some 50 wounded when six bombs blew up during evening mass outside four churches in Baghdad and one in the main northern city of Mosul.
It was an unprecedented assault on Iraq`s 700,000 Christians, who have traditionally lived in peace with the overwhelming Muslim majority.
As survivors counted the cost of the destruction, the interim government`s national security adviser, Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, blamed the mayhem on Iraq`s most-wanted militant.
"We have basically all the blueprint that indicates that Zarqawi and his gangsters were responsible," Rubaie told AFP.
"His motive is to drive a wedge between the Muslim and Christian community in Iraq," he added, vowing an immediate set of heightened security measures to protect the Christian minority.
Baghdadis blamed foreigners for the murderous attacks.
"This was not done by Iraqis. It was done by people who don`t know who God is," said Marie Butros, 35, a hospital secretary in the city`s upscale Karada district which was targeted by two of the bombs.
"At least one suicide bomber" was involved and police defused two other car bombs in Baghdad, Rubaie said.
The US military said a fifth device, packed with mortars rounds, was defused. Father Samir Butros, said a car filled with mortars outside St John`s church had merely caught fire, not far from the worst attack in Al-Dura.
The plotters eluded Iraq`s intelligence services, who had no advance warning of the bombings, but, given previous strikes on mosques, Rubaie said it "was to be expected" that the Christians would be next on the list.
A hitherto unknown group calling itself the "Planning and Follow-up Committee in Iraq" claimed responsibility for the bombings in a statement posted on an Islamist website Monday.
"Your Mujahedeen (Islamic guerrilla) brothers dealt painful blows to the dens of the Crusaders, the dens of evil, corruption, vice and Christianization by blowing up four booby-trapped cars," the statement said.
Its authenticity could not be independently verified.
Iraq`s largely ceremonial president, Ghazi al-Yawar, condemned the attacks as "terrorist explosions" and called for Iraqis to "stand shoulder to shoulder against those who kill our brothers".
The most revered spiritual leader of Iraq`s Shiite Muslim majority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, reached across the confessional divide to denounce a "criminal campaign targeting Iraq`s unity, stability and independence".
Emmanuel Delly, the patriarch of the Chaldean church, Iraq`s largest Christian denomination, begged for a united front in the face of violence.
"Christians and Muslims must stand together for the good of Iraq because we are one family," he told AFP.
In the evening, US troops and Iraqi security forces surrounded Sadr`s home in the holy city of Najaf for about an hour, sparking brief clashes with Shiite militiamen in which one woman was killed.
The unrest came two days after multinational forces arrested Sheikh Mithal al-Hasnawi, Sadr`s representative in the nearby holy city of Karbala.
Nearing the end of a Middle East tour, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi announced that Kuwait and Iraq had restored diplomatic ties exactly 14 years after they were severed when Saddam Hussein`s army invaded the small Gulf emirate.