15/5/15 (AINA) -- Juliana George, a 16 year-old Assyrian girl who was kidnapped from her home in Baghdad 9 days ago (AINA 2015-05-12), was released yesterday after a $55,000 ransom was paid. According to her father, George, Juliana was badly frightened by the experience but was not apparently mistreated. "I fear for her and my two other ...
Cuban News Agency - May 2015 HAVANA, Cuba, May 9 (acn) Cuban President Raul Castro invited the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill, to visit Cuba, during a cordial meeting on Friday as part of his official program in Russia. Invited by the Russian head of state, Vladimir Putin, to celebrations for the 70th anniversary of the ...
Fides News Agency - May 2015 In view of the parliamentary debate on the adoption of the Constitution of the Autonomous Region of Iraqi Kurdistan, Chaldean Patriarch Louis Raphael I intends to open a free and serene debate on the formulas which in the constitutional text will indicate members of the various Christian communities as full ...
Fides News Agency - April 2015 To commemorate the genocide of their ancestors in 1915, members of the Syriac [Assyrian] community in the city of Midyat will begin a collective hunger strike on 20 April, also to draw the attention of the Turkish public and International opinion to the massacre of Christians that took place in Anatolia. Not ...
April 2015 Chicago (AINA) -- The Patriarch of the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East was laid to rest today in a funeral service attended by thousands in Chicago, and watched by thousands of others across the world. The funeral service began at 10 A.M. at St. George Church in Rogers Park, Chicago, and ...
Fides News Agency - 18/3/15 Baghdad -- In Iraq, bloodied by sectarian strife and in the hands of jihadists, a law to prosecute religious preachers who incite violence and therefore threaten the peaceful coexistence of citizens belonging to religions and different denominations needs to be enacted. This is the request addressed to the Iraqi Parliament by the ...
By Janelle Powers http://www.crossmap.com - 14/1/15 Thirteen Egyptian Christians kidnapped in Libya have been released. The group was released on Monday, according to the Libya Herald and the BBC. The group was kidnapped last Saturday. Earlier in December seven Egyptian Christians were kidnapped. They are still missing. According to reports from the BBC, they were abducted by masked gunmen ...
(AINA) -- 2014 was a bad year for the Assyrians of Iraq, who comprise 95% of the country's Christian population. ISIS drove nearly 200,000 Assyrians from their homes and villages in the Nineveh Plain, forcing them to flee further north. They have been living as refugees since August 7. But the spirit of Christmas has not ...
8/12/14 ERBIL, Iraq (AFP) -- Pope Francis said Christians are being "driven from the Middle East," in a message to Iraqi Christians forced to flee by Islamic State group jihadists. "It would seem that they (the extremists) do not want there to be any Christians, but you bear witness to Christ," he said in a video address ...
By John Burger http://www.aleteia.org - October 2014 Tens of thousands of refugees in northern Iraq are facing a winter living in tents or unfinished concrete buildings. Humanitarian aid organizations, local governments and NGOs are doing what they can to keep internally displaced persons warm, healthy and well-fed, but the task is huge, and some people on the ground say ...
October 2014 (AINA) -- According to a report by Al-Masalah, an Iraqi news outlet, a security source in Baghdad confirmed on Saturday that on September 27 armed men assaulted a home in southwest Baghdad and killed an Assyrian family of four. The source told al-Masalah "Unidentified armed men assaulted a home belonging to a Christian family in ...
3/9/14 Sodertalje (AINA) -- Sweden's first Assyrian school opened its doors for the new school year in the town of Sodertalje, 36 kilometers south of Stockholm, which has a large population of Assyrians. More than 70 pupils from first grade to sixth grade have enrolled in Elafskolan School, which is expected to grow to several hundred ...
http://en.radiovaticana.va - 12/8/14 Two of the leading voices in the Muslim world denounced the persecution of Christians in Iraq, at the hands of extremists proclaiming a caliphate under the name Islamic State. The most explicit condemnation came from Iyad Ameen Madani, the Secretary General for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the group representing 57 countries, and 1.4 billion ...
July 2014 The night of July 16/17 is a tragic date in the history of Russia. On this day in Yekaterinburg, the Russian Tsar Nicolas II, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, their children as well as their faithful servants were brutally murdered. The Church “on the Blood” in honour of All Saints who have Shone Forth in the ...
15/7/14 Mosul (AINA) -- ISIS removed the cross on top of the dome of St. Ephrem Cathedral in the Shoorta neighborhood in Mosul, one week after the church was seized by ISIS members on July 1. St. Ephrem Cathedral is the seat of Syriac Orthodox Archdiocese in Mosul. ISIS quickly began imposing Islamic rule (sharia) in Mosul soon ...
3/7/14 (AINA) -- The Hammurabi Human Rights Organization (HHRO) formed a Joint Relief Team with Christian Solidarity International (CSI) and visited the displaced families from Mosul and Baghdede (Qaraqosh). They distributed relief aide, including food baskets, milk and infant formula, household items and other essential needs. Mr. Louis Marques, Vice President of the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization ...
Daily Star, Lebanon - 2/7/14 BEIRUT -- The patriarchs of Eastern churches Tuesday deplored raging violence in Iraq and Syria that has caused massive displacement of people, calling to maintain the Christian presence in region's war-torn countries and preserve their lands. In a statement released at the opening of their Holy Synod in Lady of Balamand Convent in ...
1/7/14 Mosul, Iraq (AINA) -- The Assyrian television channel Ishtar TV is reporting that 5 Assyrians have gone missing in Mosul. Two Chaldean nuns from the Daughters of Mary Order, Sister Miskintah and Sister Utoor Joseph, as well as Hala Salim, Sarah Khoshaba and Aram Sabah have not been heard from for nearly two days. Sisters Miskintah ...
23/6/14 (AINA) -- Assyrians in the United States held demonstrations in three cities on Friday in support of Assyrians in Mosul, Iraq, and other areas which have fallen under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Mosul has been cleared of Assyrians and other Christians, as they fled the city after the ...
By Lela Gilbert Fox News - 21/6/14 Just a year ago, after months of bombings, shootings and kidnappings, Baghdad's Monsignor Pios Cacha made a grim prediction. He said that his Iraqi Christian community was experiencing the kind of religious cleansing that eradicated the country's once-thriving Jewish community half a century before. His rather prophetic words made headlines in Lebanon's ...
19/6/14 (AINA) -- Sources in Tikrit and Mosul have told AINA that ISIS has cut off water and electricity to some parts of the cities. The villages surrounding Mosul have also lost their water service, which was provided by the water purification plant in Mosul. In the Assyrian villages of Bartella and Qaraqosh, residents are now ...