Tag: Islamic State

‘Next time we will not survive’ – Middle East Christian refugee

November 12, 2018 Aleppo, Batnaya, Beirut, Hasakah, Iraq, Islamic State, Kirkuk, Lebanon, Middle East, Mosul, Qaraqosh, Raqqa, Refugees, Syria, UN

Boy outside a tent in a refugee camp in Lebanon. (Photo: World Vision)

As many as 80% of Syria’s Christians have left their country since the start of the civil war in 2011, while 50% of Iraq’s Christians have been uprooted since 2006, according to a report produced by Christian charities Open Doors International, Served and Middle East Concern last year, which said the . . . Read More

Iraq: Christian school’s reopening a ‘victory over extremism’

November 8, 2018 Iraq Children, Education, Iraq, Islamic State, Minorities, Mosul, Terrorism

The reopening of the oldest Christian school in Mosul – a northern Iraqi city once controlled by IS – has been hailed as a “victory over terrorism and extremism”. The Shimon Safa Elementary School was closed for four years, but has welcomed 400 students – aged between six and 12 . . . Read More

Iraq: More than 200 mass graves with thousands of bodies discovered

November 6, 2018 Iraq Anbar, Iraq, Islamic State, Kirkuk, Mosul, Nineveh Plains, Syria, UN

Syrian forces excavate a site, said to be a mass grave, in the west of Raqqa governorate in December last year. (Photo: Getty Images)

More than 200 mass graves containing the remains of thousands of people killed by Islamic State have been discovered in northern and western Iraq, according to a UN report released on Tuesday, 5 November. The report by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and UN Human Rights Office documents . . . Read More

Islamists suspected of bus attack killed, as Copts mourn

November 5, 2018 Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Anba Macarius, Copts, Egypt, Islamic State, Minorities, Minya, Mohamed Morsi

Egypt’s interior ministry claimed yesterday to have killed 19 Islamist militants suspected of carrying out the bus attack on Friday that killed seven Copts and injured over a dozen others. The militants were killed in a shootout in the desert area west of Minya governorate, where the attack took place, . . . Read More

One year after Marawi’s liberation from IS, thousands of Christians still displaced

October 19, 2018 Philippines Catholics, Islamic State, Marawi, Maute, Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte

Street in battle-scarred Marawi in a still taken from a video.

A year ago this month, the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, declared victory over Islamic State-linked militants in a battle for the city of Marawi in the south of the country. On 23 May 2017, militants belonging to the Maute group, an affiliate of Islamic State, had taken over . . . Read More

‘If this is not genocide, then what is?’ asks Iraqi archbishop

October 17, 2018 Iraq Baghdad, Chaldeans, Iraq, Islamic State, Syriacs

One more wave of persecution and Christianity could be erased from Iraq, a church leader has warned. Habib Nafali, Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Basra, said the killing and displacement of Iraq’s Christians and “systematic violence” towards them had been intended to force them out of Iraq. “If this is not . . . Read More

Iraqi Christian boy Noeh under his own roof again

October 15, 2018 Iraq Iraq, Islamic State, Karamles, Middle East, Nineveh Plains, Pope Francis, UN, USA

Around 40,000 Christians who escaped from the 2014 attacks of Islamic State in Iraq’s Nineveh Plains have returned to their homes but are in a “very hard situation”, according to the Pope’s nuncio in Iraq: “There is still much to be done, much to rebuild. The houses were damaged, burned . . . Read More

17 sentenced to death for Coptic church bomb attacks

October 12, 2018 Egypt Alexandria, Cairo, Copts, Egypt, Islamic State, Minya, Palm Sunday, Pope Tawadros II

Egypt’s military court has handed death sentences to 17 people for carrying out bomb attacks on Coptic churches in 2016 and 2017, the BBC reports. The attacks, which killed dozens of people, were claimed by Islamic State. One of them was the bomb explosion in a chapel adjacent to the . . . Read More

Nobel Peace Prize for two campaigners against rape as weapon of war

October 5, 2018 Global News -- No Particular Country Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Islamic State, Women, Yazidis

The Congolese physician Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad, a Yazidi, have been announced as the winners of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict”. “Denis Mukwege is the helper who has devoted his life . . . Read More

IS sex slave recalls having to watch torture of other women

October 3, 2018 Iraq Iraq, Islamic State, Qaraqosh, Women

Iraqi Christian Rita Habib was sold four times on the ISIS sex slave market. (Photo: Still from video)

One of the Christian women who was captured, trafficked and used as a sex slave by ISIS has told The European Post she was forced to watch public executions and the torture of other women. “They did evil things to us, they were beating us every day, sexual assaults, and trading us as . . . Read More

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