Paul Keenan
Archbishop issues appeal for aid
Virtually all Christian families and clerics resident in the Iraqi city of Mosul have fled amid the recent takeover by Islamic militants.
According to the city’s Chaldean Archbishop Shimoun Emil Nona, who has provided dispatches to the Fides news agency since the seizure of the city by fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), only those Christians too elderly and infirm to join the mass exodus from Mosul have remained.
“Now jihadist militants control the city and the situation is calm. But we do not know what they want to do now,” the archbishops said in a message last weekend from Tilkif, a town some kilometres from Mosul, to which, along with Kramles, Chaldean priests have fled.
The archbishop revealed too that, as ISIS fighters began looting abandoned buildings after their victory, Muslims who had remained in the city had moved to protect the main Chaldean Church of the Holy Spirit once it became clear the fighters were desecrating the site.
“The same Muslim families phoned us to let us know that they themselves are controlling the church, and will not allow the jackals to return,” the archbishop said.
The Holy Spirit church is the site of the 2007 murders of Fr Ragheed Ganni and three deacons and from where Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, was abducted, and murdered in 2008.
Earlier, Archbishop Nona issued an appeal for aid for the estimated 500,000 people who chose to flee Mosul ahead of the June 9-10 assault on the city, warning that the supplies of food and water citizens were able to carry as they fled would quickly run out, leading to a desperate situation. The United Nations is now gearing up to deal with the wave of refugees seeking safety in the Kurdish controlled region of Iraq’s north, which ISIS, for now, has skirted in its military advance.
A former affiliate of al Qaeda, ISIS (also known as ISIL – Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), flourished during the years of American occupation in Iraq before turning its attention to the conflict in Syria. There, despite frequent clashes with rebel groupings opposed to its extreme Islamist outlook and the loss of al Qaeda support, the group has maintained a hold on territory in the north of the country across the border from Mosul.
On June 11, it was reported that fighters of the group had demolished a border post in a symbolic gesture uniting its territories in Syria and Iraq.