Christians and other religious minorities in Northern Iraq are facing “genocide” at the hands of Islamic State fighters, one of Iraq’s leading Catholic Bishops has warned.
“They are facing a human catastrophe and risk a real genocide. They need water, food, shelter,” Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako of Babylon said in an open letter.
The Catholic News Agency reports that Patriarch Sako’s letter followed the fall of the city of Qaraqoush to forces of the Islamic State. The town was one of Iraq’s largest Christian towns until the Kurdish military forces known as the Peshmerga withdrew from it. Qaraqoush is about 19 miles southeast of Mosul, which Islamic State forces captured in June.
Qaraqoush is referred to as the Christian capital of Iraq. Islamic State militants have taken down crosses and burned religious manuscripts, the BBC reports.
Patriarch Sako said about 100,000 Christians fled their villages and houses “horrified and panicked” with “nothing but the clothes on their backs,” the Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need reports.
