A painful blow to al-Qaeda
Iraq has arrested at least 12 suspected al-Qaeda insurgents believed to be behind a deadly Baghdad church siege a month ago that left 44 worshippers and two priests dead, an interior ministry official said Saturday.
Interior Minister Jawad Bolani said the arrests, the first in connection to the October siege at the Our Lady of Salvation church, occurred in recent days.
He said the insurgents were behind a wide range of operations in Iraq leading up to the siege and described their arrest as a coup for security forces.
"It is a painful blow to al-Qaeda," Bolani said.
Among those arrested were Huthaifa al-Batawi, the Baghdad chief of the Islamic State of Iraq, the al-Qaeda front group which carried out the attack.
The militants were detained in raids carried out in the upscale west Baghdad neighborhood of Mansur and on Palestine street, in the capital’s east.
Insurgents took about 120 people hostage during the Oct. 31 church attack. The siege ended hours later with 68 people dead in an attack that shocked many of Iraq’s already-hardened citizens.
The attackers raided the church, located in one of Baghdad’s more affluent neighborhoods during Sunday evening Mass. Dozens of cowering parishioners, and two priests were killed — one execution-style on the church floor — before Iraqi security forces stormed the building.
Around 60 others were wounded in the bloodbath, and the five militants who carried it out were also killed.
Al-Qaeda later claimed responsibility for the attack and vowed in an Internet message to continue a campaign of bloodshed against Iraq’s dwindling Christian minority.