Barely a week after Pope Benedict ended a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, vandals desecrated some 70 graves in two Palestinian Christian cemeteries in the occupied West Bank in what a Palestinian Authority official said was a rare attack on the Christian minority in the territory.

    During his trip, Benedict tried to soothe Muslim anger over past remarks on Islam and urged Palestinian Christians not to follow others of their minority group in emigrating abroad.

    A church official in the predominantly Christian village of Jiffna near Ramallah said that neither he nor Palestinian Authority investigators had any initial clues who was responsible.