Radical insurgents in Iraq have reportedly set fire to a church, amid a wake of thefts and ultimatums directed at Christians in the country’s second-largest city of Mosul.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the levant (ISIS wrestled control of the northern Iraqi city on 10 June in an attempt to carve out a Sunni caliphate.
large swathes of Christian and Iraqi property has been seized by the militant group as it grows its governance in the aim of making Mosul the capital of its new Islamic state.
Another property seized by militants, the ancient Catholic Mar Behnam Monastery, located 15 miles south of Mosul, was a place of pilgrimage and an important Christian landmark.
However on Sunday, it was seized by ISIS fighters and its monks expelled, who were permitted only to take the clothes they were wearing. last week, the extremists gave Christians in Mosul three options: either convert to Islam, pay a special tax or be killed.
They gave a deadline of Saturday 19 July, which led to a mass exodus of Iraqi Christians — communities that had had 2,000-year-old links to the country — on Friday, Al Arabiya News reports.
Though a number of Christians — a religious minority in Iraq — had already fled the city after hard-line ISIS captured it last month, for many the ultimatum was the final straw. The city is now said to be all but clear of Christians.
Iraqi Christians who have fled the violence say that they had to either leave most of their belongings behind or have it stolen by armed militants.
“We had to go through an area where they had set up a checkpoint,” Zaid Qreqosh Ishaq, 27, said of his family, as he explained they were on their way to the relatively safe region of Iraqi Kurdistan.