Tag: Nineveh Plains

Iraqi Christian militia fighting ISIS

April 11, 2016 Iraq Baghdad, Iraq, Islamic State, Nineveh Plains

A group of Christians in Iraq has formed its own militia to defend themselves against the so-called Islamic State, . The Babylon Brigade of the Iraq Christian Resistance, headquartered in Baghdad, is the only Christian militia among about 30 Shia and Sunni Muslim outfits that have sprung up over 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

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

Visiting a monastery in ISIS territory

November 10, 2015 Iraq Iraq, Islamic State, Kurds, Mosul, Nineveh Plains

An international aid worker has shared his experiences of visiting a monastery in what is technically regarded as IS-held territory within Iraq. His blog, ISIS Territory – Smoke on the Horizon, Song in the Chapel, describes the fear he felt leaving behind the last Kurdish checkpoint and his meetings with . . . Read More

Global Church meets to seek unity in face of persecution

November 6, 2015 Global News -- No Particular Country Albania, Aleppo, Algeria, Catholics, Churches, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, El Salvador, India, Iraq, Islamic State, Kenya, Kidnapping, Lebanon, Myanmar, Nigeria, Nineveh Plains, Orthodox, Pakistan, Pentecostals, Protestants, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Yohanna Ibrahim

Twenty-five years ago, on 4 Nov. 1990, a priest risked his life to hold a mass in a cemetery in Albania. In 1967 his president, Enver Hoxha, had declared that he had “abolished” the Christian faith, and that his country was henceforth the world’s first atheist state. On 4 Nov. . . . Read More

‘Kill the Christians’

April 15, 2015 Iraq, Islamic extremism, Maaloula, Middle East, Nineveh Plains, Syria

A BBC documentary, ‘Kill the Christians’, is available on the BBC iPlayer (for those with access) until April 14, 2015. The hour-long programme reports on how “Christianity is facing the greatest threat to its existence in the very place where it was born … the Middle East”. The documentary includes . . . Read More

Iraqi Archbishop ‘begs’ Britain to send in troops

February 10, 2015 Afghanistan, Bashar Warda, Chaldeans, Iraq, Islamic State, Kurds, London, Nineveh Plains, UK

The Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Erbil – the city in Iraqi Kurdistan where thousands of Christians have fled to safety from Islamic State fighters -‘begged’ Britain to send troops to his country to help save Christians there from being wiped out. He said an estimated 125,000 Christians in northern Iraq have . . . Read More

Catching Our Eye