[T.j. Holmes, Cnn Anchor:] Hey there, everybody. Good morning. From the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia, this is CNN SUNDAY MORNING on Easter Sunday. Happy Easter to you. I'm T.J. Holmes.
[Suzanne Malveaux, Cnn Anchor:] Happy Easter. I'm Suzanne Malveaux. It is 6 a.m. in Atlanta and 12 noon at the Vatican. Thanks for starting your day with us. Any minute now, the pope will address tens of thousands of Catholic followers as Easter services get under way. We're going to take you around the world to show you all of the celebrations.
[Holmes:] Also, 42 years later, this is the anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We're going to take a closer look at his visit to the nation's oldest city and how that helped shape the civil- rights movement. But first, we want to get to some of the stories making news overnight, including a breaking story this morning. A violent start to Easter Sunday. Twelve dead, 27 injured in Baghdad. This is after three car bombs went off. And it all happened within five minutes of each other. You can see in some of these pictures here, the thick black plumes of smoke filled the sky over that city. Firefighters, emergency crews responded to those blast zones. We'll continue to follow this developing story. Again, breaking news this morning. We are going to be going live to Baghdad just ahead.
[Malveaux:] And police in Los Angeles are looking for the triggerman in a deadly shooting at a San Fernando restaurant on Saturday. Now, police say that four people were killed, two were wounded, with one of the victims in critical condition. Police have a sketchy description of that suspect.
[Holmes:] And a happy Easter Sunday for army linguist Isa Salome. The 60-year-old returned home to San Diego yesterday after being held hostage in Baghdad for more than two months. And the military not elaborating on how Salome was freed. Salome not speaking about it either just yet. He was kidnapped back in January, late January, reportedly by an extremist Shiite group.
[Malveaux:] And it's Easter, and Christians around the world are celebrating one of the holiest days on the Christian calendar. Sunrise services happening this morning in cities and towns everywhere. And they are celebrating we're getting some pictures out of Vatican City, live pictures here to see some of those celebrations under way.
[Holmes:] And we are going to be taking to a couple of celebrations, some live pictures. Of course, this one happening right now in Vatican City. The pope expected to come out and deliver his Easter Mass at any moment. A lot of people you can tell by this picture here as well, people still gathered. Of course, they're going to gather even though it's a pretty rain day right now in Vatican City. Again, the the church right now, the Catholic Church really in a in a tough time given what has been happening. Here we are. Let's go ahead and listen to the crowd as they are greeting the pope. And we will continue to keep an eye on this. Again, just starting the service right now, this morning. Expecting his Easter Mass speech to take place. Easter, of course this is coming at a difficult time for the Catholic Church. The top bishops in Belgium as well as Germany condemning the church's role in covering up child abuse within its ranks. CNN's Diana Magnay is there in Rome for us. We are some people, Diana, standing by, wondering if the pope will address some of the scandal in his speech today. What do we expect?
[Diana Magnay, Cnn Correspondent:] Absolutely, T.J. Well, we have just been down at that square talking to people about whether they think it is appropriate for the pope to address the issue, the scandal overshadowing the church this week, of sex abuse. Some people said they thought it was a good opportunity, and they expected him to say something. Others said that that he should wait until after Easter, and this wasn't the time. But of course, Easter itself is a time for the the day that Christ was resurrected, the forgiveness of sins. We can certainly expect the pope to be saying a lot about that in his "Urbi et Orbi" address, that the an address he gives at Easter and at Christmas. But other people, other bishops and other clergymen have used their Easter week Masses and their Easter week homilies to address the scandal, and there certainly has been a lot of expectation that on various occasions this week, the pope might have referred to it also. But so far, he hasn't,
[T.j. Holmes:] And Diana, there seems to be a bit of a split in some ways, where you have some coming out, really calling the the saying he's an unfailing leader. But then you have others other parts of the church who are saying that there have been some failures, and pope's personal preacher came out and compared some of the attacks on the pontiff to anti-Semitism. There has been some response. What are you picking up in the responses to that?
[Magnay:] Well, yes, that was a comment made in the Mass on on Good Friday, with pope's personal preacher citing a Jewish friend of his, who had said that this campaign within the media against the pope was similar to the worst forms of anti-Semitism. We the Vatican distanced themselves immediately from that comment and said that they in no way equated this what they have called a campaign of attack against the pope with anti-Semitism. We then saw on Saturday, the head of the Anglican church, Archbishop Williams, referring to the situation in in the Church of Ireland as having lost all credibility. Those comments immediately retracted after the archbishop of Dublin expressed his great concern and disappointment about those comments. It has really been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, a lot of comments being retracted. But the pope so far has said nothing. One thing that he will say, T.J, is in 65 languages, he is expected to say Happy Easter at the end of this address that is coming up. And the last two of those languages will be Icelandic and Kazakh,
[T.j. Holmes:] Wow. All right. Diana Magnay for us there keeping an eye on things. Diana, thank you. And again to our viewers, we will continue to follow again, this is a live event right now, the pope just stepping out to deliver the Easter Mass. We will listen in to his message and certainly be dipping in to that throughout the morning.
[Malveaux:] And Easter is being celebrated in the Holy Land as well. Now, this is the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where the faithful gathered last night. A candlelight vigil was held in the church considered the traditional birthplace of Jesus. Thousands of Christian pilgrims are celebrating this holy day as well at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Easter Sunday caps Holy Week.
[Holmes:] Well, the president and his family heading out to church this morning. They're going to be attending church service this morning in Washington, even though we're not quite sure which church he's going to be heading to. We'll probably figure it out in a little while when we start seeing metal detectors go up at a particular church in D.C. You saw some video there. This is the president at last year's Easter services at St. John's church. Again, don't know if the people who will be attending church with the president this morning know he's going to be there. It's a little different going to church with the president of the United States. Again, last year, a couple of hours before that church service, some of those metal detectors started going up. So we'll keep an eye out for the president this morning,
[Malveaux:] More now on our breaking news. Three car bombs rocked Baghdad in what appears to be a coordinated attack. Two of those blasts in western Baghdad. Now, the third was reportedly in front of the Iranian embassy in the central section of the city. I want to go right to CNN's Mohammed Jamjoom. He is in Baghdad. And and Mohammed, we are looking at some of the casualty figures early on, and we so far have 12 who have been killed, 12 dead, and 27 wounded. Is that right?
[Mohammed Jamjoom, Cnn Correspondent:] That's right, Suzanne. Interior Ministry officials are telling us 12 killed, 27 wounded. We do expect that number to rise throughout the day. We also have some new information. The three car bombs happened around 11:15 a.m. local, within about five minutes of each other. We're now being told which exact buildings were being targeted, not just the Iranian Embassy in central Baghdad, which is close to the heavily fortified Green Zone also two car bombs in the Mansour neighborhood in western Baghdad, one outside of the Egyptian Embassy, one outside of the Polish Embassy residence. Now, nobody yet has claimed responsibility for these attacks. But certainly, it looks like it has the fingerprints all over of it of al- Qaeda in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq, which is the umbrella group for al-Qaeda in Iraq. In the past year, starting in August of 2009, we've seen these types of coordinated attacks going after government installations, a lot of them in central Baghdad. Scores of people killed. Really signaling a new type of insurgency. Since U.S. troops have withdrawn from the cities, al-Qaeda government buildings to underscore how vulnerable the Iraqi government is and to show people here in Iraq that their government can't protect them the way they should Suzanne.
[Malveaux:] Mohammed, is it unusual that no one has taken responsibility yet, or is this just just a matter of authorities kind of waiting for a little bit before they announce who they think is responsible?
[Jamjoom:] Right now, this is very typical. There's a lot of confusion after these types of attacks happen. There's a lot of rumors that swirl around. You know, usually the claims of responsibility by al-Qaeda don't happen until a day or two afterwards. Typically, what you see, the trajectory of these things is, within several hours, Iraqi government officials will come out and sort of point the finger at one specific group. But that hasn't happened yet, and we don't expect it will for for quite awhile yet, Suzanne.
[Malveaux:] Are we expecting some of those casualty figures to change? Do we think it's a lot worse?
[Jamjoom:] Well, we don't yet know how how high they will go. And clearly, everybody here is hoping that this will be one of the lower casualty figures for these types of attacks. But in the past year, starting in August of 2009, when you've seen these attacks that have happened, you've seen hundreds of people killed and wounded. And right now, we just don't know you know, these attacks when when this went off this morning, we heard them, we felt them. It really rocked central Baghdad. They were very, very big explosions. When I've been out to the scene of these explosions in the past, last October, there were explosions at the Ministry of Justice, and the Baghdad government I mean, these level entire city blocks. And when they happen at a time like this this is the start of the workweek. It's 11:15.
[Malveaux:] OK.
[Jamjoom:] A lot of people are coming into work. It's really done to maximize casualties Suzanne.
[Malveaux:] All right. Mohammed Jamjoom, thank you so much. Be safe.
[Holmes:] We're going to turn to some weather here now. There's been some damaging weather across the country in the past week, in the Midwest, the flooding on the East Coast as well. Could be in for maybe another wild week possibly?
[Malveaux:] You know, I that's what we're hearing. It could be severe weather in the forecast today as well. Reynolds Wolf, obviously, you're tracking all of these things. And it looks like it could be pretty bad for some folks.
[Reynolds Wolf, Cnn Meteorologist:] It could be interesting today, especially by late afternoon. When I say that, late afternoon into the early evening, from about 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. for places like the Show Me State of Missouri, where they could have some strong thunderstorms, maybe even some large hail and damaging winds. We're going to give you more on that coming up in just a few moments.
[Holmes:] All right. Reynolds, thanks. We'll see you shortly. Also, what do you do? You mix 60,000 Easter eggs, 10,000 kids. You might be asking for some trouble, and this Easter egg hunt ended with some minor injuries. Stay with us on this Easter Sunday.