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Forced from Mosul, centuries old Christian community vanishes

The Islamic State robbed Christians of their money and valuable possessions as they forced them from their ancestral home in Mosul.
An Iraqi Christian man fleeing the violence in the Iraqi city of Mosul, sits inside the Sacred Heart of Jesus Chaldean Church in Telkaif near Mosul, in the province of Nineveh, July 20, 2014. The head of Iraq's largest church said on Sunday that Islamic State militants who drove Christians out of Mosul were worse than Mongol leader Genghis Khan and his grandson Hulagu who ransacked medieval Baghdad. Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako led a wave of condemnation for the Sunni Islamists who demande

ERBIL, Iraq — When fighters from the extremist Sunni groups led by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) rolled into the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on June 10, Rami and his extended family in the al-Arabi neighborhood were rattled and frightened. Despite fears about what might happen to them under the victorious jihadists, they decided to stay, unlike many others who left.

“We, as Christians, were in Mosul for generations,” said Rami, now in the basement of the Um Nour Church in the Christian-dominated district of Ankawa, in northern Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. “Our ancestors lived there for hundreds of years. It wasn’t easy to leave.”

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