Christians fleeing Iraq amid ‘surge of bloodshed’

November 21, 2013

Increasing numbers of Christians are emigrating from Iraq despite statements from the Chaldean Catholic patriarch exhorting them to stay.

The “tenuous optimism after a brief improvement in security starting in 2008 has been dashed by a surge in bloodshed this year,” Agence France-Presse reported.

“Christians in Iraq are rarely explicitly targeted -- as they were during the height of the country's sectarian bloodletting in 2006-2007 -- but the daily attacks and bombings have made life unbearable,” the AFP report continued.

 

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Further information:

• Flight of Iraq Christians resumes amid surge in unrest (AFP)
• Chaldean patriarch: granting of asylum to Iraqi Christians ‘threatens our existence’ (CWN, 11/12)