Sunni militants stormed a church in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Sunday and kidnapped two priests and a nun, witnesses said. Militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadist group have in recent weeks seized large parts of northern and western Iraq, including Mosul, as well as a string of towns stretching south towards Baghdad.
According to Iraq’s most senior Christian leader, Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako, there were about 1.2 million Christians living in Iraq before 2003. Today there are, at most, 500,000.
Two nuns and three orphans have been missing since Tuesday in militant-held areas of the northern province.
Meanwhile, in Baquba city, at least 13 people were killed in shelling and clashes between ISIL insurgents and Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the city, which is located 60 kilometers north-east of Baghdad, dpa reports.
According to refugees, extremists have demolished several religious shrines with bulldozers and burned down historical monuments, including mosques. Gunmen from the terrorist organization “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL) in Iraq, are obliterating Muslim shrines and mosques. Reported by the Iranian “Press TV” channel, informs TASS.
The report cites evidence given by refugees who escaped from the northern province of Nineveh, controlled by extremists. Those, who managed to escape, say that the terrorists crushed a number of religious shrines with bulldozers and blew up historical monuments, including mosques.
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