ASIA/IRAQ - Ever more difficult the life of believers in Christ in the land of Iraq

Baghdad (Agenzia Fides) - For Iraqi Christians life is increasingly difficult due to the never ending war and escalation of confessional violence which culminated earlier this week with the murder in Mosul of a Chaldean Catholic priest and three sub deacons. The situation is serious in Baghdad, Mosul and Bassora, where Christian communities are targeted by all kinds of threats and violence.
“With a grief filled heart the Chaldean Church mourns her martyrs”, Patriarch Emmanuel Delly III and the Chaldean Bishops said at the funeral of the four clergymen attended by more than two thousand people in the northern town of Karamles,.
Following the murder of the clerics, the few remaining Christians in Mosul are getting ready to move to other regions or abroad, many are heading for the autonomous province of Kurdistan.
Since the killing of the priest and deacons, a local new agency has reported attacks on two churches in the Dora district of Baghdad, St. John the Baptist church in Hay Al-Athoriyeen and Saint Jacob's church at Hay Al Asya, which has reportedly been taken over and made into a mosque. Saint Jacob's was almost completely destroyed in attacks on four churches in the capital on 16 October 2004.
The Chaldean Catholic community is convinced that there is a plan for “ethnic cleansing” with regard to Iraqi Christians. They say this plan is advancing and must be stopped by the civil authorities because Christianity in Iraq dates to the 1st century AD.
Other observers say extremists want to eliminate “the educated middle class”, which has as its reference and values, progress, science and western culture. (PA) (Agenzia Fides 6/6/2007 righe 256 parole 24)