Tag: Iraq

Iraq: children wounded in Easter Monday explosion

April 4, 2018 Iraq Bartella, Children, Easter, Erbil, IDPs, Iraq, Islamic State, Nineveh Plains, Qaraqosh

Four children were wounded on Easter Monday when a bomb exploded outside a medical complex in Bartella, east of Mosul, according to Iraqi News. No group has claimed responsibility but it is believed that Islamic State militants were behind it, a source told the news site. Despite its military defeat, . . . Read More

Iraq’s Assyrian Christians: persecution and resurgence

April 4, 2018 Iraq Ankawa, Assyrians, Bartella, Chaldeans, Erbil, Iraq, Islamic State, Karamles, Kurds, Migrants, Nineveh Plains, Peshmerga, Qaraqosh, Refugees, Saddam Hussein, Syria, Women, Yazidis

Samir Gedhya never wanted to leave his home in Qaraqosh for the unknown, even when the Islamic State group was almost at his doorstep, sweeping through the towns of Iraq. As the menace to Qaraqosh loomed, his eldest son Faraj, then 16, decided to flee to France, entering by a . . . Read More

Easter in Qaraqosh – for many their first since returning home

April 3, 2018 Iraq Assyrians, Easter, Iraq, Islamic State, Qaraqosh

On Sunday, many of Iraq’s Christians celebrated their first Easter since returning to their homes. With the help of local churches and other organisations, people in the country’s largest Christian city, Qaraqosh (also known as Baghdida), have restored their homes and are now attempting to recover the lives they lost . . . Read More

Palm Sunday celebrations mark revival of life in Qaraqosh

March 26, 2018 Iraq Iraq, Islamic State, Nineveh Plains, Palm Sunday, Qaraqosh

For many Christian families in Qaraqosh, this Easter is particularly special, as they will be celebrating it at home for the first time since fleeing the city in 2014. The city, located in northern Iraq’s Nineveh Plains, was occupied by the Islamic State group for over two years before its . . . Read More

Fresh move to prosecute IS for genocide

March 21, 2018 Global News -- No Particular Country David Cameron, Europe, France, Genocide, International Criminal Court, Iraq, Islamic State, Kuwait, Lord Alton, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Syria, UK, UN, USA

Destroyed market in the town of Bartella, 15km east of Mosul, which was liberated from IS by Iraqi forces in October 2016. (Photo World Watch Monitor)

Campaigners have welcomed a bill designed to facilitate the prosecution of Islamic State jihadists for genocide against Christians, Yazidis and other minorities in Iraq and Syria. Complaining that efforts to encourage the British government to accuse IS of genocide had received “nothing but rebuttals and refusals”, Lord Alton, a Catholic, . . . Read More

Iraq’s young people must lead its rebuilding, says archbishop

March 21, 2018 Iraq Baghdad, Churches, Iraq, Islamic State, Kirkuk, Minorities, Mosul, Nineveh Plains, Shia, Sunni, USA, Youth

Army truck with Iraqi flag on its way in the direction of Mosul. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

The rebuilding of Iraq should be guided by its young people, says an archbishop who took in 700 students from Mosul University after the occupation of the city by Islamic State in June 2014. Bishop Yousif Thoma Mirkis of Kirkuk, 170km southeast of Mosul, recently visited the university and reunited . . . Read More

5 years on, what has Pope Francis done for religious freedom?

March 19, 2018 Global News -- No Particular Country Al-Azhar, Asia Bibi, Boko Haram, Egypt, Havana, Human rights, Iraq, Latin America, Minorities, Myanmar, Patriarch Bartholomew I, Patriarch Kirill, Pope Francis, Religious freedom, Syria, Turkey

Pope Francis greets people during his inauguration on 19 March 2013. (Photo: Getty Images)

Pope Francis, the son of Italian migrants, appeared on the steps of St Peter’s Basilica five years ago to be introduced as the first Latin American pontiff. Below, World Watch Monitor looks at a few of the highlights of his tenure so far, and his impact on freedom of religion . . . Read More

Iraqi archbishop nominated for 2018 Nobel Peace Prize

March 13, 2018 Iraq Iraq, Louis Raphael I Sako

Archbishop Louis Raphaël I Sako, the head of the Iraq-based Chaldean Church, one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, has been nominated for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, reports Asia News. Following his nomination, the archbishop said receiving the prize “would be an important and significant gesture, because it would . . . Read More

Mosul still ‘extremely dangerous’, says returning Christian woman

March 13, 2018 Iraq Assyrians, Churches, Iraq, Islamic State, Mosul

Nadia Butti, a Christian woman from Mosul, found the churches of her city desecrated or demolished after returning home for the first time since the liberation of the city from the Islamic State group in July 2017, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) reports. She told ACN there were . . . Read More

Iraq: Christian family stabbed to death in Baghdad

March 12, 2018 Iraq Assyrians, Baghdad, Iraq

An Assyrian Christian family of three were murdered in their home in a predominantly Shia neighbourhood in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, last Thursday (8 March). Dr. Hisham Shafiq al-Maskuni, 61, a radiologist at a nuns’ hospital, his wife Dr. Shaza Malik Dinno, gynaecologist at the same hospital, and her elderly mother, . . . Read More

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