MOSUL - A SERIES of bombs exploded outside churches and a monastery in the main northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Sunday, in an apparently coordinated attack wounding four people and damaging buildings, police said.

The first explosion struck outside the Chaldean Church of St Paul in Mosul in the early afternoon. The church's windows were shattered and its surrounding fence was damaged but there were no casualties.

A few minutes later four civilians were wounded when a bomb planted in a parked car went off outside the Assyrian shurch of the Virgin Mary in the city.

Two hours later, two bombs exploded outside the Chaldean shurch of Maskanta in Mosul without causing casualties. The attacks happened on Epiphany Sunday.

'Windows and fences around the buildings were smashed, four people were injured,' said Brigadier General Abdul Karim Khalaf al-Juburi of Nineveh province police.

According to official figures, the Christian community in Iraq has slumped from around 800,000 in the 1990s to between 400,000 and 600,000 now.

Some have sought refuge from insurgent and sectarian violence in the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq. Others have fled the country.

The Assyrian church traces its separate identity in the Middle East back to the 5th Century AD. Chaldeans preserve the Assyrians' eastern rite but recognise the authority of the Vatican.

Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, the 80-year-old patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, was among 23 clerics made cardinal on Nov 24.

Pope Benedict XVI said during the ceremony that by elevating Delly he sought to show in a 'concrete way my spiritual closeness and affection' for Iraqi Christians. -- AFP