Tag: Iraq

US declares ISIS campaign ‘genocide’

March 17, 2016 Genocide, Iraq, Islamic State, Syria, USA

The US government has declared that Islamic State has committed genocide against Christians and other religious groups. Secretary of State John Kerry said on behalf of the government that Islamic State was “genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology and by actions”. It follows the declaring atrocities committed by ISIS in Iraq . . . Read More

US lawmakers accuse IS of genocide

March 15, 2016 Barack Obama, Bashar al-Assad, Genocide, Iraq, Islamic State, Syria, USA, Yazidis

The U.S. House of Representatives has joined the growing number of voices in Western capitals accusing the so-called Islamic State of genocide. In a 393-0 vote 14 March, the House declared “the atrocities perpetrated by ISIL against Christians, Yazidis, and other religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria constitute . . . Read More

ISIS burns Christian books

March 14, 2016 Iraq Education, Iraq, Islamic State, Mosul, Sharia

ISIS has released a video purporting to show its religious police burning hundreds of Christian books, according to . The video footage shows a militant throwing pamphlets, bearing a cross on the front cover, onto a bonfire. It was posted on 13 March by its news agency, Amaq, with the . . . Read More

Iraq’s Christian homes ‘grab’ continues

February 24, 2016 Iraq Baghdad, Iraq, Islamic State, Louis Raphael I Sako, Nineveh Plains

Homes and businesses left behind by Iraq’s Christians are being illegally taken, as hostile forces continue to scrape off the last vestiges of two millennia of Christian presence in the country. “ISIS has displaced 120,000 Christians from Mosul and the Nineveh Plains, destroying monasteries, churches and homes to erase their memory. . . . Read More

Assyrians seek world support vs. Turkish bombings

January 27, 2016 Iraq Assyrians, Dohuk, Iraq, Nineveh Plains, PKK, Turkey

A coalition of Assyrian organisations in Europe has urged Turkey to stop bombing Assyrian villages in northern Iraq “under the pretext of fighting the Kurdish PKK”, on 26 Jan. The aerial bombardment by Turkey was part of an intensified campaign, ongoing since late August 2015, according to a statement by . . . Read More

IS’s finances lead to auction of Christian homes

January 21, 2016 Iraq Iraq, Islamic State, Mosul, Nineveh Plains

Islamic State has started to auction Christian properties that it seized in Mosul to ease its deepening financial crisis, according to Arabic media. Its jihadis went on patrol in Iraq’s second largest city, announcing the sale of over 400 homes, 19 commercial buildings and 167 shops, stores and garages, several . . . Read More

Oldest Christian monastery in Iraq destroyed

January 20, 2016 Iraq Iraq, Islamic State, Mosul

Satellite images have confirmed that the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been destroyed, . It is thought that St. Elijah’s, which stood on a hill near Mosul and was constructed 1400 years ago, was destroyed in the summer of 2014, shortly after the area was taken over by the . . . Read More

Iraqis who fled Mosul and IS flee Turkish bombing

January 19, 2016 Iraq Assyrians, Baghdad, Iraq, Islamic State, Kurds, Louis Raphael I Sako, Mosul, Nineveh Plains, PKK, Saddam Hussein, Turkey

The Turkish air force has bombed the Assyro-Chaldean Christian village of Upper Sharanish in northern Iraq. Condemning what he called the “unjust act”, Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako urged Ankara to “respect the lives and properties of the inhabitants and not to displace them under the pretext of fighting” the Kurdish . . . Read More

2016 World Watch List drawn from world headlines

January 13, 2016 Global News -- No Particular Country Africa, Bibles, BJP, Boko Haram, Central Asia, Charlie Hebdo, Churches, Egypt, Hindu nationalism, India, Iraq, Islamic extremism, Islamic State, Kenya, Libya, Middle East, Mosul, Niger, Nigeria, Nineveh Plains, North Korea, Paris, Sub-Saharan Africa

Some of the most urgent headlines of the past 12 months, from the global spread of jihadist violence to North Korea’s test of a putative atomic weapon, intersect with an updated list of the most difficult places to live as a Christian. For the 14th straight year, North Korea is . . . Read More

Islamic State’s ‘caliphate’ shrank 14% in 2015

January 6, 2016 Afghanistan, Iraq, Islamic State, Kurds, Mosul, Ramadi, Raqqa, Syria, Turkey, USA

Islamic State’s self-proclaimed ‘caliphate’ – the area within Syria and Iraq that the group controls – shrunk by more than 12,000 square kilometres in 2015, says . The loss of 14 per cent of its territory reduces the caliphate to 78,000 square kilometres. Main losses are large swathes of Syria . . . Read More

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