Sources in Northern Iraq tell Fox News that nearly 2,000 Christian families have fled have been forced to evacuate the village of Teleskof, an Assyrian-Chaldean-Syriac Christian town about 19 miles north of Mosul, on Tuesday after they were caught in the crossfire between Kurdish and Iraqi forces.
ishtartv.com - foxnews.com
By Perry Chiaramonte.
25-10-2017
Sources
in Northern Iraq tell Fox News that nearly 2,000 Christian families have fled
have been forced to evacuate the village of Teleskof, an
Assyrian-Chaldean-Syriac Christian town about 19 miles north of Mosul, on
Tuesday after they were caught in the crossfire between Kurdish and Iraqi
forces.
The
first Iraqi Christians to return home after their village was freed from
Islamic State control were forced to flee yet again Tuesday as Peshmerga forces
stormed the area, a dark turn in what was broadly considered a “success story”
of rebuilding in Northern Iraq.
Between
700-1,000 Christian families have been forced to evacuate the village of
Teleskof, an Assyrian-Chaldean-Syriac Christian town about 19 miles north of
Mosul, sources in the region told Fox News.
Peshmerga
fighters from neighboring Kurdistan stationed in the village started engaging
in a battle with forces from the Iraqi central government. The fighting wounded
civilians, including children. People who returned only recently to rebuild
their homes have been told to leave the village before the standoff between
Kurdish and Iraqi forces reaches a boiling point.
“An
emissary from the Iraqi government told the people of the village that they had
until sunrise to evacuate,” a source in the region, who asked to be
unidentified, tells Fox News. “They were told that the Iraqi army and the
Shiite militia have said they will forcibly evict the Peshmerga in the
morning.”
Teleskof
was only recently liberated from ISIS and was considered the model for
rehabilitating minority community towns and villages across the Nineveh Plain
region of Northern Iraq earlier this year. The town was recently rebuilt with
$2 million in aid from the Hungarian government.
A
majority of the Assyrian towns in the plain have been left decimated. In some
of the other towns, most of the infrastructure has been reduced to rubble; in
others, dangerous chemical compounds have been dumped, polluting the ground to
toxic levels.
“The
one success story in Northern Iraq and it’s about to be destroyed over a
pissing contest between the Kurds and Iraqi central government,” sources
familiar with humanitarian efforts in the region told Fox News. “The whole
thing is a mess.”
Clashes
between Iraqi and Peshmerga forces broke out on October 16 in the aftermath of
a referendum where the Kurdish people voted overwhelmingly in favor of
seeking full independence from the central government in Baghdad.
The
already frail Christian population of Northern Iraq has been caught in the
crossfire.
“The
writing was on the wall when the KRG decided to go through with their premature
referendum against the recommendation of world powers,” Juliana Taimoorazy,
president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council and senior fellow for Philos
Project, which promotes “positive Christian engagement in the Middle
East,” told Fox News.
“What
we see develop today does not come as a surprise but it brings with it immense
heartache for our international Assyrian Chaldean Syriac community, for we
watch our already battered family and friends find themselves once again on the
run, leaving behind the very little they had started to accumulate since their
recent return to their homes in the spring of this year.”
An
estimated 200,000 Christians remain in Iraq, down from over 1.5 million prior
to the 2003 Iraq invasion, the majority of whom were forced to flee Mosul and
other parts of the Nineveh Plains to the Kurdish-held north in 2014 as ISIS
assaulted in on their land.
Deemed
the ancestral homeland of all Christianity, many of these Christian areas in
the Nineveh now lie in the disputed areas between the Kurdistan Regional
Government (KRG) based in Erbil, and the central government further south in
Baghdad.
“This
is probably the [Iraqi] Christians’ Waterloo,” a source within the region’s
clergy system said to Fox News, also asking to remain unidentified for fear of
retribution from Kurdish forces. “This is really the last stand.”
The
source added, “Christianity could be wiped out from the region come tomorrow
morning.”
Sources
also say that some clergy as well as other men, who are being led by Fr. Salar
Kajo of the Chaldean Catholic Church, have refused to leave Teleskof.
Officials
from the KRG released a statement late Tuesday, in which they
acknowledged the firefight in Teleskof and called for Iraqi forces to stop the
skirmish and recognize their recent referendum vote.
“Attacks
and confrontations between Iraqi and Peshmerga forces that started on October
16, 2017, especially today's clashes, have caused damage to both sides and
could lead to a continuous bloodshed, inflicting pain and social unrest among different
components of Iraqi society,” their statement read. “Certainly, continued
fighting does not lead any side to victory, but it will drive the country
towards disarray and chaos, affecting all aspects of life.”
The
KRG also asked that Baghdad issue an immediate ceasefire and halt all military
operations in Kurdistan as well as freeze the results of the referendum.
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