The bloodshed followed a night of clashes between US troops and insurgents that killed 12 Iraqis and wounded 39 others in Fallujah.
The unprecedented attacks against Iraq's 750,000-member Christian minority seemed to confirm community members' fears that they might be targeted as suspected collaborators with American forces amid a rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism.
''What are the Muslims doing? Does this mean that they want us out?" Brother Louis, a deacon at Our Lady of Salvation, asked as he cried outside the damaged Assyrian Catholic church. ''Those people who commit these awful criminal acts have nothing to do with God."
A spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior, Sabah Kadhim, attributed the attacks to outsiders.
''It's the same people who want chaos in Iraq," he said. ''It's the so-called jihadists. The Christian community is one of the most respected in Iraq."
The wave of explosions, at least four of them car bombings, began after 6 p.m., as parishioners gathered inside their neighborhood churches for services. The blasts shattered stained-glass windows and sent churchgoers running into the streets, screaming.
Fire engines and ambulances raced to the scenes of the bombings, as black smoke poured into the sky and US attack helicopters circled overhead.
The explosions were minutes apart and hit four churches in Baghdad -- two in Karada, one in the Dora neighborhood, and one in New Baghdad.
A fifth church was hit, in Mosul, about 220 miles north of the capital. The attacks did not appear to be suicide bombings, US military and Iraqi officials said.
''We were in Mass, and suddenly we heard a big boom, and I couldn't feel my body anymore; I didn't feel anything," said Marwan Saqiq, who was covered in blood after the attack on Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad's heavily Christian Karada neighborhood. ''I saw people taking me out with the wood and glass shattered everywhere."
Iraqi police discovered a sixth bomb, consisting of 15 mortar rounds, outside a Baghdad church, and authorities disarmed it, the US military said in a statement.
