Iraq

Speak out for Christians in Iraq

Chronology of recent attacks against Iraqi Christians

On 16 May 2011, the body of 29-year-old Chaldean Christian Ashur Issa Yaqub was found with marks of severe torture and mutilation. Al-Qaeda members had demanded £60,000 for his release, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). He had worked as a construction worker from the northeastern city of Kirkuk, and a pastor there told Compass that before his murder the kidnappers had pressured his employer to fire him because he was a Christian.

On 2 January 2011, a group of terrorists attacked a Christian family in their house at Al-Karada quarter in Baghdad and killed a woman called Rafah Toma. Rafah survived the bloody attack on the Syrian Catholic Church on 31 October 2010.

During the months of November and December 2010, as the West was preparing itself to celebrate Christmas and New Year, approximately 30 more Christians were killed, and many others fled the dangerous cities of Baghdad and Mosul, to the safer regions of Kurdistan, in the hope to find peace and security.

On 30 and 31 December 2010, bombs went off in front of houses of Christians in Baghdad's al-Yarmouk district. Several houses were damaged and casualties reported.

On 15 December, armed militants abducted a young Christian female student from her home in Mosul.

On 30 November, an Iraqi soldier and a Christian citizen were killed and seven people wounded in separate gunfire and a car bomb attack in the city of Mosul.

On 30 November, Fadi Walid Gabriel, a Syrian Orthodox layman, was seized by a gunman and killed in an empty shop close to his house.

On 22 November, two Christian brothers, Saad Hanna (43) and Waad Hanna (40), were killed inside their workshop in Mosul's western Igab district.

On 17 November, a bombing killed a Christian man and his six-year-old daughter in Mosul.

On 16 November, attackers went into two homes occupied by Christian families in the Tahrir neighbourhood in the eastern part of Mosul. They killed the two male heads of the households and then drove off.

On 10 November, at least three people were killed and 20 injured in a series of attacks in the Baghdad neighbourhoods of Zayouna, Sara Camp, Duara, al-Mansour and al-Ghadir.

On 9 November, an Armenian Christian was killed in Baghdad in front of his house.

On 7 November, Louay Daniel Yacoub (49) was shot in front of his apartment in Baghdad. Another Christian was killed on the same day in this city but his identity has not been disclosed.

On 7 November, a priest from a Syrian Orthodox Monastery reported the killing of a Christian family in Baghdad inside their own flat.

On 31 October 2010 Islamic extremists assaulted a Syrian Catholic Church in Baghdad in one of the bloodiest attacks on the country's dwindling Christian community. Reportedly, 58 people were killed after a four-hour long stand-off between the terrorists and the security forces. Many Christians were killed after tortures first took place, and several babies were killed.

On 2 May 2010, three buses with Christian students were targeted in a bomb attack near Mosul. Three Christians were killed and 180 left wounded. If it wasn't for the heroic sacrifice of a shopkeeper, who was alarmed by suspicious behaviour of some Arabs nearby, and stopped the buses before they reached the car that was carrying the explosives, many more of the students would have been killed.

On 7 March 2010, Political tensions ahead of parliamentary elections in Iraq left at least eight Chaldean Christians dead and hundreds of families fleeing Mosul. 

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