MIDEAST-CRISIS/JORDAN REFUGEES CHRISTMAS MASS Displaced Iraqis pray for peace at home and the region

Record ID: 274707

  • Title: MIDEAST-CRISIS/JORDAN REFUGEES CHRISTMAS MASS Displaced Iraqis pray for peace at home and the region
  • Date: 25th December 2014
  • Summary: AMMAN, JORDAN (DECEMBER 24, 2014) (REUTERS) MAN WEARING SANTA CLAUS COSTUME RINGING BELL AS WORSHIPPERS ARRIVE AT CHURCH IRAQIS HEADING TO THE CHURCH EXTERIOR OF CHURCH (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) IRAQI CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY IN JORDAN, GHAZI IBRAHIM, SAYING: "After June 9 , 2014, until now, people who arrived from Iraq who were displaced from Mosul and neighbouring villages number
  • Embargoed: 9th January 2015 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Jordan
  • Country: Jordan
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVACOD3XA6YH5WR0059UXDCN3CDI
  • Story Text: Iraqi Christians living in the Jordanian capital Amman attended Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve (Dec. 24) to pray for peace and for loved ones back home.
    Driven from their homes by Islamic State (IS) forces earlier this year, many of the worshipers belong to the ancient Christian community of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Ordered to convert to Islam, pay a religious tax, or face the sword, the last remaining Christian families fled the city of two million in July, ending a presence stretching back nearly two millennia.
    Iraqi Christian community member, Ghazi Ibrahim told Reuters TV that more than six-and-a-half thousand Christians were expelled from Mosul and its environs since the radical Sunni Islamists overran the city six months ago.
    "After June 9, 2014, until now, people who arrived from Iraq who were displaced from Mosul and neighbouring villages are 6,612 in Jordan," he said, speaking outside the Roman Catholic church.
    The Christians described their flight as a historic loss.
    Speaking before Midnight Mass, displaced Iraqi Christian, Basel Jerjas said he hoped peace would eventually be restored to Iraq.
    "I hope that security will be restored and stability will prevail in Iraq and the region; and it is up to people whether they want to go back to their homes or move," he said.
    Another Iraqi Christian exiled in neighbouring Jordan said it was ordinary people who were the ones paying the price for the sectarian violence tearing apart his country.
    "I hope that the situation will be really calm and people live in peace and love. The issue of sectarianism did not exist and the citizen is the one who paid the price," Majid Matti told Reuters.
    The militants' seizure of Mosul also drove other ethnic and religious minorities away, such as the Shabak and Turkmen Shi'ites and the Yazidis, an ethnically Kurdish group practising a religion linked to Zoroastrianism.
    Jordan, which borders both Iraq and Syria, is host to more than 800,000 refugees, according to the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR.
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