As the battles raging against the Islamic State-ruled stronghold of Mosul, Western-backed forces continue to liberate towns and villages surrounding the embattled city. Among the towns and villages, Christians who survived two years of Islamic State rule, said the jihadists threatened to kill them on a regular basis, while forcing them to spit on crosses and making them stamp on images of Jesus and his mother Mary. Most of the residents of Qaraqosh – Iraq’s largest Christian town – had fled towards the country’s autonomous Kurdish region more than two years ago as the extreme-Muslim militants approached, but several Christians decided to stay.
“Three young men, new volunteers, walked (into the house). They took this picture and that, they took them all. They took my crucifix and stood at the door, they asked me to come and spit at the crucifix. I said (to myself) Oh God. I was crying inside but I couldn’t show it,” said Zarifa Daddo, Christian Iraqi who lived under IS rule.
Islamic State singled out religious minorities in northern Iraq, including Christians and Yazidis, for murder and eviction after declaring a caliphate in 2014 over territory they captured there and in neighboring Syria. Their seizure of Mosul and surrounding towns effectively drove Christians from the area for the first time in two millennia.