The
following excerpts are from AINA.org:
(AFP)
-- Threats by jihadists have sent a fresh wave of Christians fleeing
their Iraqi homeland, bustling from exodus to exodus in search of a
safe haven to rebuild their lives.
Raja
Marzina, who has taken refuge in Jordan with her husband and their
five children, never imagined she would one day have to leave Iraq
for good.
"But
we had no choice; we had to flee to save our lives and our religion,"
she said.
Like
dozens of others who fled the orgy of violence unleashed by Islamic
State (IS) jihadists this summer, Marzina goes to the Syriac
Catholics Virgin Mary church in Amman for prayers and to discuss the
latest events back home.
IS
militants between June and August seized Mosul, Iraq's second city
that was home to a sizeable Christian community, and Qaraqosh, the
country's largest Christian town.
Jordan
is the transit point for Iraqis waiting to emigrate to North America
or Europe, after a stopover in the autonomous Kurdish region in
northern Iraq.
"Around
70 percent of the Christians of Iraq have left their country over the
past 20 years because of its successive wars and conflicts,"
said Wael Suleiman, the Jordan director of the Catholic relief
organisation Caritas.
It
was estimated their were one million Iraqi Christians before the wave
of emigration began, with Baghdad once home to 600,000 of them.
The
number of Christians in Iraq has been declining ever since the 2003
US-led invasion and the insurgencies that followed.
Read
more by clicking below:
From Exodus to Exodus, Iraqi Christians Seek New Home
