Baghdad, Iraq ? For the first time in their lives, Widad Mikho and her sister Neshwan will not attend Sunday Mass, too frightened after a series of church bombings across Baghdad.

But fear will not keep Dana George away. “It would be better to die in church than anywhere else,” she said.

Iraq’s Christians, increasingly targeted by insurgents, are fleeing Baghdad for the safety of the Kurdish north or neighboring Syria and Jordan. After Saturday’s bombings of five churches — which damaged buildings but caused no casualties — Christian leaders fear more will leave.

But the exodus is temporary, insist many, because they are not selling their homes and property. They will wait it out and return when the situation improves.

Pascale Isho Warda, a Christian who is interim government’s minister for displacement and migration, estimated as many as 15,000 of Iraq’s nearly 1 million Christians had left the country since August, when four churches in Baghdad and one in Mosul were blown up in a coordinated series of car bombings.

The attacks killed 12 people and injured 61 others. Another church was bombed in Baghdad in September.

Saturday’s “explosions will no doubt push people to immigrate,” said the Rev. Raphael Qutaimi, acting bishop of the Syrian Catholic Church. “But this country has been ours for thousands of years. Our ancestors shed blood defending it. We mustn’t leave it.”

He and all the dozen Christians interviewed Saturday said the attacks were not the work of Muslim Iraqis, but foreigners.

“The foreigner is trying to create division and enmity between Christians and Muslims. We must stand hand in hand and heart to heart and not give the outsider cause to divide us,” Qutaimi said.

“They want us to leave Iraq,” said Surah Samaan, a 25-year-old lab technician, referring to the attackers, who she believes are Arabs linked to al-Qaida.

But Yonadem Kana, secretary general of the Assyrian Democratic Movement, said the general security situation of the country — car bombings, kidnappings and murders, which affect all of Iraq’s religious groups — had chased away many Christians.

“They figure instead of staying and paying $50,000 to kidnappers for ransom, they can spend $5,000 in Latakia or Damascus,” he said, referring to two cities in neighboring Syria.

He said more than 100 Christians had been slain after the U.S.-led war, including 35 liquor vendors and others who worked for coalition forces. About 200 more have died in the general violence that has gripped Iraq. Insurgents have been targeting many Iraqis who are seen as helping the U.S.-led forces, and extremist militiamen have often targeted people in occupations seen as breaking Islamic rules.

Never in Iraq, Kana said, had a church been attacked, not since the days of the Mongols, who massacred 800,000 of Baghdad’s residents and destroyed the city in the 13th century.

Neshwan Mikho, 46, has been cleaning the Saint John’s Church in the working class neighborhood of Bataween every Saturday for the past seven years undeterred by rain, sandstorms or even shellings. “But today, I was afraid to go when I heard the news,” she said.

“I am sad in my heart because tomorrow I will not be attending Mass,” said Widad, a Chaldean Christian. “They are denying us what is most important thing in our lives.”