14 year old boy beheaded in Iraq

Dreadful news on murders of Assyro-Chaldaeic Christians reached the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) on Tuesday from Iraq. The 22 year old Christian Assyro-Chaldaeic Z.A. was murdered on Sunday in the as- Saa quarter of Mosul on his way to work. A 14 year old was beheaded on 21st October in Bakuba in the province of Diala by masked men. In a report of the Arab language website ankawa.com it is reported that the men appeared shortly before the beginning of work at 6 a.m. and called on the boy to show his papers. When they abused him as an unbeliever I.Y. was just able to reply that he was a Christian, but not an unbeliever. Then the masked men seized him by the arms and legs and cut off his head.

„These crimes are part of a chain of murders of individuals, bomb attacks against churches and church buildings, rapes and abductions, which are directed directly at Christians living in Iraq,“ reported the GfbV Near East expert, Kamal Sido in Göttingen. On 11th October the beheaded body of the Syrian-Orthodox priest, Paul Alexander was found in Mosul. On the same day the 55 year old minister, Dr Joseph Fridon Petros was attacked in Baghdad by Islamists and killed.

The terror against Christians in Iraq is becoming aggravated every day to such an extent that now the overwhelming majority are trying to save themselves and their families. „We are witnessing the exodus of a 2000 year old people, which even today speaks the mother tongue of Jesus, albeit in a modern form“, said the GfbV expert, Sarah Reinke. The Archbishop of Kirkuk, Louis Sako, described Baghdad to the Christian news agency, Zenit, as a real „prison“, from which the Christians are trying to break out. Even from quarters like „Al Dora“, which had until recently been seen as safe, the people had to flee. The „Babel College“, the only theological faculty, has had to close at least for the time being.