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Thousands of Christians flee Mosul
"I have been informed that three houses have been blown up. In two of them, the families were already displaced. The third, they evacuated the family and then blew up the house," Christian parliamentarian Unadim Kanna told Iraqiya state television. The provincial governor Duraid Kashmula said on Saturday that nearly 1,000 Christian families have fled their homes over the past 24 hours in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and have taken shelter in schools and churches in the northern and eastern fringes of Nineveh province of which Mosul is the capital. He said that Christians are undergoing the worst wave of violence against them in five years, which has resulted to the death of 11 people. Police in Mosul confirmed that three empty houses belonging to Christians had been blown up on Saturday. In recent weeks, hundreds of Christians have taken to the streets in Baghdad and Mosul to protest against a provincial election law. Iraq's parliament on September 24 approved a long-delayed provincial elections law to allow provincial elections to go ahead, but lawmakers scrapped a key clause, known as Article 50, that would have guaranteed seats for Christians and other minorities. The government has asked parliament to restore the quotas. US forces say Mosul is where militants from al-Qaeda have regrouped to make a stand after being driven from other parts of Iraq, especially the capital Baghdad. Iraq with a population of an estimated 29m has around 400,000 Christians, which is half the number of Christians living in Iraq before the US invasion of the country in 2003. Posted by: Fred 2008-10-12 |
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