Jihadist-held Mosul free of Christians
July 21, 2014The Daily Telegraph
IRAQ'S second-biggest city has been cleared of Christians, an Iraqi official says, as Mosul's final Christian families, facing an ultimatum from Islamist militants at home, fled to the autonomous region of Kurdistan.
"THE numbers of Christians in Mosul were around 50,000 people," said Bashar Kiki, a local council chief in the northern province of Nineveh, where Mosul is the key city.
"Since (the US-led invasion of) 2003, around 30,000 Christians have left the city. The rest have left the city after recent threats made by terrorist groups," he added. Kiki relocated the council to the town of Qushahwali, some 45km north of Mosul, after it fell to militants from the Islamic State terrorist organisation in June. "Now Mosul is free of Christians for the first time in its history."
Earlier this week, members of the Islamic State ordered Mosul's Christians to either convert to Islam or pay a protection tax or face death. The al-Qaeda splinter group gave Christians until mid-Saturday to make a choice.
A presidential spokesman in Kurdistan on Saturday called on the world to swiftly assist the Kurdistan government in sheltering and protecting the Christians they have taken in. According to Iraq's most senior Christian cleric, Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako, there were about 1.2 million Christians living in Iraq before the US-led invasion of the country. The figure has dwindled to around 500,000 at present.
The Islamic State has seized large chunks of territory in Iraq's Sunni heartland in the north and west in recent weeks. The chief of the radical Sunni group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, last month declared the establishment of an Islamist caliphate in the territory under its control, which includes parts of Iraq and neighbouring Syria, raising fears for the emergence of a regional militant enclave.
[We are thankful that the Christians have escaped and found refuge in Kurdistan. May God bless those who have shown them refuge. Ed.]
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