Posted on 08/30/2014 7:38:09 AM PDT by marshmallow
Friar Gabriel Tooma leads a service at the Chaldean Church of the Virgin Mary of the Harvest, in Al-Qosh on June 15. At the time, the Christian village in northern Iraq was taking in those fleeing violence in the nearby city of Mosul. Now the village itself is largely deserted.
The northern Iraqi village of Al-Qosh was humming with activity — and some jitters — when NPR visited back in June. The Assyrian Christian villagers had opened their schools and homes to Iraqis fleeing the takeover of nearby Mosul by Islamist fighters calling themselves the Islamic State.
But these days, most of Al-Qosh is as silent as the 6th-century monastery overlooking the village from a hill. A few Kurdish security men guard the entrance to the village, primarily concerned with keeping potential looters away from the tidy stone and cement homes.
The villagers fled en masse in early August, when Islamist fighters made a move in Al-Qosh's direction. Now, as Kurdish forces begin to retake territory around Mosul, including the strategic Mosul dam, some families have begun to trickle back to Al-Qosh. Most stay only during daylight hours, however, afraid to stay overnight with Islamic State forces a mere 20 miles away.
Leaving Everything Behind, Yet Again
Raed Salman, 45, is one of the few who's here full time, at least for now. The truck driver's recent history is sadly familiar to many Iraqis.
"This is the second time I'm displaced. We're originally from Baghdad," he says. "We fled Baghdad; my father and brother were kidnapped. We paid a huge ransom, but they shot and badly wounded my brother. Now we're displaced for a second time."
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
And now you know why our muzzie president has sat back and watched the Muslim cry at work....”Kill all the Christians and Jews”!
Bookmarked.
Obama is a muslim himself and could care less, but the murder and extermination of Christians in Iraq is on Bush the Younger, for his boneheaded, totally unnecessary invasion of Iraq. He was told exactly what would happen to Christians and he could have cared less.
Although Obama has except for that interview at that time when he almost came out to admit it that he was a Muslim, he subbed the words “my Christian faith.”
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