Baghdad, Iraq, Jun 28, 2007 / 09:31 am
The release of eight kidnapped Christians on Friday was welcomed by Iraq’s Christian community. However, numerous other Christians continue to be killed or driven out of their homeland by the increasing violence and killings.
The violence has precipitated a mass exodus, with some 2.2 million Iraqis now residing outside the country and another two million internally displaced, according to a June 5 briefing of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
According to the UN, about 50,000 Iraqis are displaced by the violence each month, fleeing to Iraq's relatively stable northern region, in and around Mosul. But recent kidnappings and murders of Christians in and around Mosul, as well as the skyrocketing cost of living, make the north less than appealing for many. So others have fled to Syria or Jordan.
A middle-aged Chaldean couple from Hai Al-Jamiyah district told Compass that they were forced to leave home with only the clothes on their backs when militants planted a sound bomb beside their car. Area residents spoke of how Christians should leave the area, said the couple, whose own children and grandson left two months prior.