BAGHDAD (AP) - Masked men detonated a bomb near an Orthodox church in southern Baghdad on Monday, and police at the scene said three people were killed and 34 wounded.

A guard at the St. Bahnam and Sheik Matti Orthodox Church in the capital's Doura neighborhood said the militants drove up in a pickup truck.

"They were all armed," said Khalaf Enad. "They quickly poured out of the car, pointed their weapons at me and said 'Get in.' They opened fire for over a minute and then I heard a big explosion."

The blast created a crater over 12 feet wide and 3 feet deep. Church deacon Matti Qeryaqos, who lives nearby, said the explosion shattered church windows and blew
the doors off their hinges, collapsing the outer wall. He said there was no service at the church at the time of the blast, and that the dead and wounded were mostly neighbors.

Mohammed Aziz said strong explosions rocked the area. "I felt my house shaking three times and then saw the fire set in the church."

Police sealed off the area and fired bullets in the air to disperse the crowd, according to another witness, Lyon Emad Elias, whose home faces the church.

(UPDATES with police reporting three dead, 34 wounded. corrects that church is Orthodox sted Catholic. ADDS byline)

Mon Nov 8, 04

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Car bombs at two Baghdad churches and outside a hospital treating the victims of those attacks killed at least eight people and wounded dozens on Monday night as a wave of blasts struck the Iraqi capital.

A car bomb exploded outside St. George's Catholic church in southern Baghdad just before 6:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m. EST),
followed just minutes later by a second outside St. Matthew's
church.

Victims from both blasts, some carried by injured friends or
relatives in torn and bloodstained clothes, were rushed to
Yarmouk hospital. A doctor said at least three people had been
killed and 40 injured.

A few hours later, a suicide car bomber plowed into four police
cars parked outside the hospital entrance, killing at least five
policemen, police said.

Several more explosions echoed across the city later in the
night, but there was no immediate word on casualties.

The wave of bombings swept Baghdad as U.S. Marines began their full-scale offensive to capture the rebel Sunni Muslim city
of Falluja, 50 km (32 miles) west of the capital.

In the latest of almost daily bombings on the main road to Baghdad airport, at least three people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack on a checkpoint earlier in the day.

Rebels fighting Iraq (news - web sites)'s interim government and it's U.S. backers have stepped up attacks around the country since U.S. forces began building up for their assault on Falluja, seen as the epicenter of the insurgency.

Iraq's Christian minority has also been targeted. Five churches were hit in a string of bombings in October that seemed designed to intimidate the Christian community, already shaken by a series of attacks that killed several people in August.

Iraq's 650,000 Christians, mostly Chaldeans, Assyrians and Catholics, comprise about three percent of the population.

Information and pictures about previous bombings