A new wave of Iraqi Christians has fled to northern Iraq or abroad amid a campaign of violence against them and growing fear that the country’s security forces are unable or, more ominously, unwilling to protect them.
The flight ”” involving thousands of residents from Baghdad and Mosul, in particular ”” followed an Oct. 31 siege at a church in Baghdad that killed 51 worshipers and 2 priests and a subsequent series of bombings and assassinations singling out Christians. This new exodus, which is not the first, highlights the continuing displacement of Iraqis despite improved security over all and the near-resolution of the political impasse that gripped the country after elections in March.
It threatens to reduce further what Archdeacon Emanuel Youkhana of the Assyrian Church of the East called “a community whose roots were in Iraq even before Christ.”
Prayer needed for these Christians – for their deliverance to a place of safety and aid for them, and for the softening of the hearts of their murderers, and for other religious and political leaders in Iraq to speak out about this wicked persecution. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.