Tag: Bartella

Iraq: Five years after IS occupied Mosul, returnees live in fear

June 10, 2019 Iraq Bartella, Bashar Warda, Human rights, Iraq, Islamic State, Minorities, Mosul, Nineveh Plains, Ramadan, Shabak

The Islamic State’s three-year occupation of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and its surrounding villages ended nearly two years ago, yet the city and its diminished number of Christian residents remain vulnerable. Last month the Iraqi government announced it would arm residents of 50 villages around Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, . . . Read More

Iraqi Christians hesitate to return to Bartella

February 12, 2019 Iraq Bartella, Iraq, Islamic State, Mosul, Nineveh Plains

Two years after Islamic State was forced out of the northern Iraqi town of Bartella, Christians hesitate to return, reports the Associated Press. Fewer than a third of the 3,800 Christian families have come back to the town in the Nineveh Plains they once shared with the Shabak, a mostly . . . Read More

Iraq: children wounded in Easter Monday explosion

April 4, 2018 Iraq Bartella, Children, Easter, Erbil, IDPs, Iraq, Islamic State, Nineveh Plains, Qaraqosh

Four children were wounded on Easter Monday when a bomb exploded outside a medical complex in Bartella, east of Mosul, according to Iraqi News. No group has claimed responsibility but it is believed that Islamic State militants were behind it, a source told the news site. Despite its military defeat, . . . Read More

Iraq’s Assyrian Christians: persecution and resurgence

April 4, 2018 Iraq Ankawa, Assyrians, Bartella, Chaldeans, Erbil, Iraq, Islamic State, Karamles, Kurds, Migrants, Nineveh Plains, Peshmerga, Qaraqosh, Refugees, Saddam Hussein, Syria, Women, Yazidis

Samir Gedhya never wanted to leave his home in Qaraqosh for the unknown, even when the Islamic State group was almost at his doorstep, sweeping through the towns of Iraq. As the menace to Qaraqosh loomed, his eldest son Faraj, then 16, decided to flee to France, entering by a . . . Read More

The Christian teenager IS turned into an atheist

February 9, 2018 Iraq Bartella, Iraq, Islamic State

Seventeen-year-old Ibrahim* found himself trapped in the northern Iraqi town of Bartella along with his elderly mother in 2014. The website of the US-based Public Radio International (PRI) tells the story of what happened to them after Islamic State jihadists had expelled all the other Christians and installed themselves as . . . Read More

Over 800,000 call on UN to protect Christians in Middle East

December 12, 2017 Global News -- No Particular Country Bartella, Bashar Warda, Brazil, India, Iraq, Islamic State, Karamles, Middle East, Mike Pence, New York, Qaraqosh, Syria, UN, USA

Noeh (bottom) with his parents, Hathem and Almas, and siblings Sam (17), Jan Hannah (14), and Salina (7). (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

A petition signed by more than 800,000 people will be presented at the United Nations in New York today (12 December), calling for the protection of Christians and other minorities in Iraq and Syria, and recognition of the key role faith leaders can play in rebuilding efforts post-Islamic State. The . . . Read More

Christians on alert as Iraqi forces take over Nineveh Plains

October 18, 2017 Iraq Bartella, Bashiqa, Iraq, Islamic State, Nineveh Plains, Peshmerga, Saddam Hussein

Christian returnees have lunch together in Bashiqa, August 2017. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

Christians who have returned to the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq, three years after fleeing Islamic State militants, are on high alert now Iraqi forces have retaken some of the disputed region from Kurdish forces. Father Poulos, one of the priests in the town of Bashiqa, near Mosul, told World . . . Read More

Hungary’s response to urgent need to help persecuted Christians ‘stay in their homelands’

October 13, 2017 Global News -- No Particular Country Ankawa, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bartella, Erbil, Genocide, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Kurds, Middle East, Nineveh Plains, Qaraqosh, Soviet Union, Syria, Tel Skuf, Viktor Orbán

Referring to his country’s experience of oppression during the Soviet Union era, the Hungarian Prime Minister has once again explained why his government has been the first – and so far the only – government to specifically address the persecution of Christians around the world. Yesterday (12 October) he pledged . . . Read More

Returning Christian families urged to put down roots in northern Iraq

May 18, 2017 Iraq Bartella, Iraq, Islamic State, Karamles, Nineveh Plains, Qaraqosh, Tel Skuf

Three building sites have been consecrated in Iraqi territory liberated from Islamic State as part of an ambitious plan to facilitate the return of Christians eager to rebuild their homes. The first group of Christian families who were driven from their homes in the Nineveh Plains by Islamic State (IS) . . . Read More

Sifting through the debris of IS’s destruction

February 1, 2017 Iraq Bartella, Iraq, Islamic State, Karamles, Nineveh Plains, Qaraqosh

The formerly Christian towns in northern Iraq liberated from Islamic State have been “destroyed” by jihadists who used a cathedral courtyard as a shooting range, according to a lawyer who visited them. Vienna-based legal counsel Ewelina Ochab, author of Never Again: Legal Responses to a Broken Promise in the Middle . . . Read More

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