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| Iraq |
| Iraqis celebrate Palm Sunday near Mosul for the first time in three years |
| 2017-04-10 |
| [Iraq News] Hundreds of Christians flocked to the Iraqi town of Qaraqosh on Sunday to celebrate Palm Sunday for the first time in three years, packing into a church torched by Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... to take communion at its ruined altar. In October, Iraqi forces expelled the Sunni Moslem forces of Evil from Qaraqosh as part of a campaign to retake nearby djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... , the country’s second-largest city seized by the group in June 2014. Iraq’s biggest Christian settlement until the forces of Evil arrived, Qaraqosh has been a ghost town as most residents are still too afraid to come back with the battle for Mosul, located 20 kilometres away, still raging. But on Sunday church bells rang again across the town. Hundreds arrived in cars from Erbil, the main city in autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan where most Christian had fled when Islamic State gave them an ultimatum to pay special taxes, convert or die. "We need reconciliation," Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Mosul Butrus Moshe told worshippers in the Immaculate Conception Church guarded by army jeeps. Islamic State has targeted minority communities in both Iraq and Syria, setting churches on fire. Scribbled "Islamic State" slogans could be still seen on the church’s walls while torn-up prayer books littered the floor. |
| Posted by:Fred |