IRAQ (ACN News): Families fleeing persecution in Mosul and Baghdad are to receive emergency aid from leading Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need.
The charity for oppressed and other suffering Christians has agreed payments of $20,000 for victims of the October 31 massacre at Baghdad’s Our Lady of Salvation Syrian Catholic Church which left up to 58 dead and more than 70 injured.
A further $13,000 will be sent to poverty-stricken Christians from Baghdad who have fled to the Iraqi cities of Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyah.
And in Zakho diocese, in the far north of the country, ACN is giving more than $30,000 to provide food packages for hundreds of Christian families.
The aid will be distributed by Chaldean Sisters of the Daughters of Mary Immaculate.
ACN’s announcement comes amid reports that 500 Christian families – more than 2000 people – have fled Baghdad and Mosul in the past few weeks amid continuing violence and intimidation.
Reports have emerged that Hekmet Jab-oure Samak and his wife Samira, an elderly Christian couple from Baghdad’s Bealdeyat district, had been killed in their home.
Church sources in Baghdad told ACN that the attackers broke into the home where the couple had been living for many years.
After killing the two Christians, the attackers comprehensively looted their home.
“Everything was taken,” the Church source said.
Speaking from northern Iraq, Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil thanked ACN for its continuing help, saying that Christians were now very afraid.
“The Christians in Baghdad and Mosul do not have a dignified life. They feel afraid even in their own home. They cannot move freely,” he said.
“They have to think twice about going to church on Sundays.”
Archbishop Warda said people would leave immediately if they could.
“The only thing that is stopping them is that in many cases they are poor and if they left they would struggle to find a job, schools for their children and a home to live in.”
