Scores of grieving Christians packed a Baghdad church yesterday for the funeral mass of a priest slain by gunmen in the latest attack on a minority community that has become a target in Iraq?s sectarian violence. Men wept and women wailed as the coffin of Adel Yousef was carried into the Syrian Orthodox Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Baghdad?s central Karrada neighbourhood, near where the priest was killed in a drive-by shooting on Saturday.

Christian clergy and churches have been targeted repeatedly in the past few months. The Archbishop of Mosul of Iraq?s largest Christian denomination, the Chaldean Catholics, was kidnapped in the northern city in February and found dead two weeks later. ?They are blind, mercenary people, who attack Christians because we are so few in Iraq and we cannot respond on a large scale,? said an elderly man who works at the church as an engineer. Many of Iraq?s Christians have left the country, among the two million refugees who have fled to neighbouring states. But the mourners at yesterday?s funeral said they refused to be intimidated into leaving their homeland. ?Sometimes I think of leaving Iraq. But I insist on staying in Baghdad. It is an issue of faith,? said a young man.