Iraq's anti-Christian violence hit new peak in 2010

(July 18, 2011) Anti-Christian violence in Iraq left 92 dead and 47 wounded in 2010, making the year the worst to date for the Christian minority, according to the human-rights group Hammurabi. Hammurabi reports that all of Iraq’s Christian churches have been badly hurt by violence and by the emigration of families leaving the country to find security elsewhere. More than 800 Christians have been killed in the years since the start of the US-lead military intervention in 2003. Nevertheless Hamurabi found that the Christians remaining in Iraq who a strong sense of commitment. On July 4 the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Emmanuel III paid a courtesy call on Ali al Sistani, Iraqi’s leading Shi’ite cleric, to demonstrate ‘the unity of Iraq and of Iraqis, Muslims and Christians.” All the Christian Churches in Iraq - Chaldeans, Assyrians, Syrians, Armenians - have suffered heavy losses in the number of their faithful, all over the country. But the decline was particularly strong in Baghdad and Mosul, where Christians are concentrated in greater numbers.