According to Agenzia Fides, there are now more than 7,000 Iraqi Christian refugees in Jordan, and funds to care for them are running low, according to Wael Suleiman, director of Caritas Jordan, a Catholic charity.

“We [Caritas Jordan] find ourselves in difficulty. We support the rents of Christian families, we distribute food and basic necessities, but within two months the funds allocated to these initiatives for assistance will end. We will have to tell these people to leave their homes and go to live on the street,” Suleiman said.

He added, “They live dreaming of escaping to America, Australia and Europe, this situation mainly has effects on school-age boys and girls: they spend days doing nothing, also because, for bureaucratic reasons, they have no access to Jordanian schools.”

These refugees, from Mosul or the Nineveh Plain, fled to Jordan to avoid the advance of the self-proclaimed Islamic State.