Tag: Peshmerga

Opposition to Iraqi enclave for non-Muslims voiced by Erbil diocese

March 30, 2017 Iraq Erbil, IDPs, Iraq, Islamic State, Kurds, Mosul, Peshmerga, Saddam Hussein

The Catholic Church in northern Iraq has voiced its opposition to suggestions that an enclave should be created to safeguard non-Muslims fearful of returning to live among their Muslim neighbours. However Stephen Rasche, aid co-ordinator for the Catholic diocese of Erbil in northern Iraq, also said that the likelihood of . . . Read More

Celebration for thousands of displaced Iraqis ahead of bittersweet homecoming

November 24, 2016 Iraq Erbil, IDPs, Islamic State, Jordan, Mosul, Peshmerga, Refugees, Trauma

The event opened with around 100 young people forming the shape of a cross.Babylon Ministries Thousands of displaced Iraqi Christians celebrated a “Return Festival” as the military advance against Islamic State (IS) in and around the city of Mosul raised their hopes of returning home after two years in . . . Read More

Iraqi Christians ask: Where were our Kurdish protectors when IS came?

November 22, 2016 Iraq Assyrians, Baghdad, Erbil, IDPs, Islamic State, Jordan, Mosul, Nineveh Plains, Peshmerga, Qaraqosh, Refugees, Tel Kaif

A young girl in a camp in Levo, northern Iraq, holds up a picture of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. One question that still angers many of the Christians who fled northern Iraq as jihadists from Islamic State (IS) advanced on their towns and villages is, “Where were the Kurdish . . . Read More

Alqosh, the last Christian town in Iraq, is here to stay

November 3, 2016 Iraq Alqosh, Nineveh Plains, Peshmerga

A view from the Christian town of Alqosh in the Nineveh Plain.World Watch Monitor For more than two years it lasted, just minutes away from Islamic State-held territory. The Iraqi town of Alqosh (50km north of Mosul) is the only Christian stronghold in the country that survived IS. Looking . . . Read More

More Iraqi towns ‘freed’ but Nineveh Christians not confident about safe return

October 25, 2016 Iraq Bartella, Bashiqa, Chaldeans, Islamic State, Karamles, Middle East, Mosul, Nineveh Plains, Peshmerga, Qaraqosh, Tel Kaif

The heavily damaged and burnt Tahira (Immaculate) Syriac Catholic Church in Baghdeda.World Watch Monitor As prayers were offered in Syriac in front of the altar of the trashed church of Mart Shmoni in the recently freed town of Bartella, more homes where Christians used to live in Iraq’s north-eastern . . . Read More

Iraqi Christians look homeward toward Mosul, uncertainly

October 21, 2016 Iraq Bashiqa, Islamic State, Jordan, Kurds, Lebanon, Mosul, Peshmerga, Refugees, Saddam Hussein

Displaced Iraqi Christians take part in celebrations on 18 October in Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, to mark the liberation of Qaraqosh, which was Iraq’s largest Christian town before it was overun by Islamic State militants in August 2014. Tens of thousands of . . . Read More

2 years after IS drove them from their homes, Iraqi Christians ‘are still in survival mode’, bishop says

August 1, 2016 Iraq Ankawa, Assyrians, Islamic State, Nineveh Plains, Peshmerga, Refugees

U.S. State Department Deputy Secretary Antony Blinken at the Washington Conference on Threats to Religious and Ethic Minorities Under ISIL, 29 July in Washington, D.C.Video capture / U.S. Office of Policy Planning and Public Diplomacy Two years after being driven from their homeland by the so-called Islamic State, displaced . . . Read More

Iraqi Christians still held by Islamic State ‘against their will’

February 1, 2015 Iraq Erbil, Iraq, Islamic State, Kirkuk, Mosul, Peshmerga, Qaraqosh, Refugees

More news has emerged about the situation of Christians who are still being detained in Islamic State after ten elderly Christians, some with disabilities, managed to escape. The group, eight men and two women, were ‘expelled’ by IS militants for refusing to convert to Islam. They spent two days travelling . . . Read More

10 more Christians flee Mosul

January 9, 2015 Iraq Chaldeans, Iraq, Islamic extremism, Islamic State, Kirkuk, Mosul, Peshmerga

On Jan. 7, ten elderly Chaldean Christians and Syrian Catholics arrived in Kirkuk, Iraq after Islamic State militants expelled them from Mosul for their refusal to convert to Islam. The group spent two days travelling to Kirkuk, an area now under the control of Kurdish Peshmerga Forces, after being forced . . . Read More

Iraqi Yazidi couple flees ISIS to freedom

December 22, 2014 Iraq Iraq, Peshmerga, Refugees, Yazidis

Rescue operations began Dec. 19 in northern Iraq for thousands of Yazidi villagers trapped for the past four months on Mount Sinjar and its surrounding villages. Aided by a barrage of coalition air strikes, Kurdish Peshmerga forces began a military offensive on Dec. 17 to break the siege imposed upon Sinjar’s . . . Read More

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