For the fourth time in two years, the Seventh-day Adventist Church in central Baghdad was damaged as a result of bomb blasts. The Oct. 24 explosions were aimed at the Palestine Hotel, located 802 feet (250 meters) from the church building.

Media reports indicate the attack, which killed 17 and injured 9, was the work of insurgent bombers, whose first two explosions first breached a wall in the hotel’s perimeter. They then drove a third vehicle in to the hotel, which was detonated. The Palestine Hotel houses a number of foreign media personnel, some of whom recorded and subsequently broadcast images of the blasts.

“When I heard the first explosion I went up to the roof of my house to see the location,” says Basim Fargo, secretary of the Adventist Church in Iraq. “While I was looking at the smoke, I heard the sound of the second explosion. After two minutes, I heard the third and biggest explosion with lots of smoke everywhere.”

The Adventist church building suffered internal and external damage. Plywood sheets, which had been temporarily covering the shattered stained-glass windows from previous bomb concussions, were blown off. Inside the church, a large window, running the full width of the parents’ room, was shattered.

“But, we have the trust and the confidence that God is guarding His people in these difficult times,” says Fargo.

Mike Porter, president of the Adventist Church in the Middle East, wrote a message of support to the members in Iraq: “We are sorry to hear that the church has been damaged yet another time. It must be so difficult living with such uncertainty all the time. We are praying that, somehow, the country will soon move ahead.”

The Seventh-day Adventist Church has had a presence in Iraq since 1923, and has congregations in several Iraqi cities.