Official: 3,000 Christians flee Iraq's Mosul & Israeli Jews, Arabs clash in fourth straight night

[Mrs. Sharon B. Hodge]

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A fourteen year old boy reacts next to his injured father Sheik Azad Khurshid, a...


Official: 3,000 Christians flee Iraq's Mosul
By BRADLEY S. KLAPPER, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 39 minutes ago
Hundreds of terrified Christian families have fled Mosul to escape extremist attacks that have increased despite months of U.S. and Iraqi military operations to secure the northern Iraqi city, political and religious officials said Saturday.

Some 3,000 Christians have fled the city over the past week alone in a "major displacement," said Duraid Mohammed Kashmoula, the governor of northern Iraq's Ninevah province. He said most have left for churches, monasteries and the homes of relatives in nearby Christian villages and towns.

"The Christians were subjected to abduction attempts and paid ransom, but now they are subjected to a killing campaign," Kashmoula said, adding he believed "al-Qaida" elements were to blame and called for a renewed drive to root them out.

Political and religious leaders interviewed said the change in tactics may reflect a desire on the part of extremists to forcibly evict all Christians from Iraq's third largest city.

Earlier this week, Chaldean Archbishop Louis Sako said he was worried about what he termed a "campaign of killings and deportations against the Christian citizens in Mosul."

Mosul police have reported finding the bullet-riddled bodies of seven Christians in separate attacks so far this month, the latest a day laborer found on Wednesday. On Saturday, militants blew up three abandoned Christian homes in eastern Mosul, police said.

Father Bolis Jacob of Mosul's Mar Afram Church said he was at a loss to understand the violence. "We respect the Islamic religion and the Muslim clerics," he said. "We don't know under what religion's pretexts these terrorists work."

The violence in Mosul occurs despite U.S.-Iraqi operations launched over the summer aimed at routing al-Qaida in Iraq and other insurgents from remaining strongholds north of the capital.

The killings come as Christian leaders are lobbying parliament to pass a law setting aside a number of seats for minorities, such as Christians, in upcoming provincial elections, fearing they could be further marginalized in the predominantly Muslim country.

Iraq's Christian community has been estimated at 3 percent of Iraq's 26 million people, or about 800,000, and has a significant presence in the northern Ninevah province.

In Mosul, where Christians have lived for some 1,800 years, a number of centuries-old churches still stand.

Joseph Jacob, a professor at Mosul University, said there were nearly 20,000 Christians in the city before the 2003 U.S. invasion. But over half have since left for neighboring towns, or new countries, he said.

Islamic extremists have frequently targeted Christians since the invasion, forcing tens of thousands to flee Iraq. Attacks had tapered off amid a drastic decline in overall violence nationwide, but that appears to be changing with the deaths this month.

On Saturday, Bashir Azoz, a 45-year-old carpenter, said he was forced to flee his home in the city's eastern Noor area after gunmen warned a neighbor the day before to leave or face death.

"Where is the government and its security forces as these crimes take place every day?" asked Azoz, who is now staying with his wife and three children in a monastery in the Christian-majority town of Qarqoush, east of Mosul.

Separately on Saturday, a U.S. soldier died when a bomb exploded near his vehicle outside Amarah, southeast of Baghdad. The U.S. military said it was withholding soldier's name until it notified next of kin.



Israeli Jews, Arabs clash in fourth straight night

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Israeli border police arrest an Israeli demonstrator following clashes between Jews and Arabs in Israel's...


By Ammar Awad
Sat Oct 11, 6:58 PM ET
Rioters clashed for a fourth straight night on Saturday in northern Israel, police said, raising tensions in a city once a rare bastion of peaceful relations between Arabs and Jews.

Police fired water cannons to disperse stone-throwing rioters in Acre, a former Crusader stronghold, arresting 32 from both sides on a day when three Arab homes were also torched and damaged, Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman said.

Israeli media said that three people were also hurt in the clashes on Saturday night, despite reinforced police guard that barricaded a section of the city after nightfall to contain stone-throwing clashes protests, closing it to traffic.

Trouble started in Acre after dark on Wednesday at the start of the Yom Kippur, the holiest day for Jews, when youths attacked an Arab man who drove into a mostly Jewish district to a relative's home, disturbing the start of 24 hours during which many Jews fast and abstain from driving.

As word spread from mosque loudspeakers of Jewish youths stoning the car, Arab crowds responded angrily, causing widespread damage to cars and shops in a main city street.

There have been no serious injuries in the violence, but at least 11 Arab homes have been torched since the riots began, officials said.

Many shops and restaurants in the old town, a popular tourist destination, were either closed or bereft of any business on Saturday. Hebrew-language flyers were circulated calling for a boycott of Arab businesses.

Abbas Zakour, an Israeli Arab lawmaker from Acre, said he was trying to mediate a truce under which representatives of Arab residents would condemn the driver involved in the Yom Kippur incident.

"Despite our differences we thought we could never reach such circumstances in Acre," Zakour told Israel Radio of the town, where 46,000 Arabs and Jews live side-by-side and violence has been rare.

"These have been a few difficult days for Jews and Arabs," Zakour said. "We should sit down together. I hope we succeed."

Sami Hawary, an Arab resident who heads a group that promotes cooperation between Arabs and Jews, told Reuters: "The tension is very high here, things are on a knife-edge."

Relations between Israel's Jewish and Arab citizens have been sometimes tense, due in part to Israel's conflict with Palestinians, 60 years after the Jewish state's establishment in what was then Palestine.

Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed in principle on a two-state solution in which the 4 million Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza, many descended from those displaced in the 1948 war, would eventually have a state.

Arabs comprise about a fifth of Israel's population.

Israeli prime minister-designate Tzipi Livni visited Acre on Friday and urged a return to calm. An escalation of the violence could hamper Livni's already tough job to form a new coalition government after the resignation of premier Ehud Olmert.

(Additional reporting by Wafa Amr in Ramallah, Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; Editing by Sami Aboudi)