After yesterday's bomb attacks on Christian neighborhoods in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) turned to the German government on Thursday with the request that the Iraqi Christians wounded in this most recent terrorist attack be transported to Germany for medical care. The French government has already taken in 34 wounded from Iraq. "Please follow the French example," is what Tilman Zülch, President the STP-International, wrote to the German Chancellor.

Yesterday eleven devices exploded within one hour in predominantly Christian districts of Baghdad. Five more people were killed and more than 20 wounded. This was a continuation of violence against Christians in Iraq: Similar attacks were made on Tuesday evening on three houses inhabited by members of this minority in the western part of the capital. On October 31 there was a devastating bloodbath in a Syrian-Catholic church in Baghdad. Representatives of Christian Assyrians/Chaldeans/Aramaeans in Iraq took the occasion to renew their demands for an autonomous region for their people in the Nineveh plains in the eastern province of Mosul in northern Iraq, where Christians, Shabak, Yazidi and Muslim Kurds make up the majority of the population. The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) supports this appeal from the Assyrian/Chaldean/Aramaean People's Council.

The continuing brutal violence against Christians in Iraq shows that minorities do not have sufficient protection and that Christians can apparently no longer live in safety outside the autonomous region of

Kurdistan and the neighboring Nineveh plains protected by their militia. Only in the autonomous federal state of Kurdistan do Iraqi Christians enjoy freedom of religion and nationality rights. From Baghdad alone, with its five million residents, more than three quarters of the 400,000 Christian inhabitants have fled since 2003 according to STP research. Of those who remain, many hardly dare to go to mass or send their children to a Christian school for fear of terrorist attacks.

The STP, which has an office in Iraqi Kurdistan, has maintained a "Chronicle of Violence" for many years documenting the violence against Christians and minorities in Iraq. To subscribe to this continuously updated chronicle of attacks, send e-mail to nahost@gfbv.de.

Translated by Elizabeth Crawford