2010 Baghdad church siege
On 31 October 2010, six suicide bombers of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) militant group stormed into the Sayidat al-Nejat Cathedral (a Syriac Catholic church in Baghdad) during Sunday evening Mass, taking the congregants hostage.The ISI was a militant group which aimed to overthrow the Iraqi federal government and establish an Islamic state in Iraq.During a failed attempt to escape in May 2011, Batawi and ten other senior ISI militants were killed by an Iraqi SWAT team.In 1999, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi started his group Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad ("Organization of Monotheism and Jihad") with the purpose of toppling so-called "apostate" Arab regimes like the Jordanian monarchy.The Times journalists spoke there with Father Thaer Abdal, who said he was worried that the threatened Quran-burning would cause Christians in Iraq to be targeted again after a period of relative calm, and said: I would like to send a message to the pastor who is in America; he lives in a society that protects humans and religious beliefs.[2]On Sunday 31 October 2010 at 5pm,[16] at dusk,[18] four men 'in military uniforms' (as a nearby resident described later) got out of a black SUV in front of the Iraq Stock Exchange in Baghdad.[18] They were wearing suicide vests and fought off security forces at the stock exchange, killing two guards who tried to stop them from raiding the building.[20][21] In probably that same Internet statement, ISI also called the church "the dirty den of idolatry",[2] said that a deadline now expired for Egypt's Coptic church to free those two women purportedly held captive in monasteries,[23] that the fuse of a campaign against Iraqi Christians had been lit,[2] and therefore now declared "all Christian centers, organizations and institutions, leaders and followers to be legitimate targets for the mujahedeen wherever they can reach them".[23] ISI, referring to the alleged Muslim women held captive in monasteries, also wrote: "Let these idolaters, and at their forefront the hallucinating tyrant of the Vatican, know that the killing sword will not be lifted from the necks of their followers until they declare their innocence from what the dog of the Egyptian Church is doing ... [and] pressure this belligerent church to release the captive women from the prisons of their monasteries".[20] The opposite view was expressed by the Tehran Times, which suggested that the initial assault on the Stock Exchange building may have been only an attempt to divert attention from their real target: the church.[18] On 1 November 2010, the building of TV station Al-Baghdadia that had been contacted by the militants (supra, ISI claim) was taken over by government troops.[16] Late November 2010, Huthaifa al-Batawi, known as ISI's "Emir of Baghdad", was arrested along with 11 others in connection with 31 October assault on Our Lady of Salvation church.