Google – AFP, Nafia Abdul Jabbar (AFP), 31 October 2013
Baghdad —
Dozens of Muslims gathered Thursday outside a Baghdad church where an Islamist
assault killed 44 worshippers and two priests three years ago, appealing for
Christians to stay in Iraq.
Clergy led
low-key prayers inside Our Lady of Salvation church in the capital's main
commercial district of Karrada, on the anniversary of the October 31, 2010
attack.
There was a
heavy security presence outside, and people were barred from entering unless
they could produce documents showing they were Christian.
At the same
time, journalists were not allowed to take photographs or film in the vicinity.
"It is
a wound that will never heal, and a crime that I will never forget," said
Rafid, a Christian man who was walking to the church.
"On
this day, with all this pain, all I can think of is leaving the country,
because the country is finished," said the 56-year-old carpenter, two of
whose cousins were killed on that day.
The attack,
the single bloodiest one against Christians since the 2003 US-led invasion,
shocked Iraq and the international community and sparked a massive flight of
Iraqi Christians from the country.
Another
worshipper, a 37-year-old who gave his name as Abu Yaqub, or father of Yaqub,
recalled the attack as a "terrifying day."
"Their
only sin is that they were praying," the accountant said, referring to the
victims.
"What
had they done?" he continued. "How can we forget this day? We will
never forget it. We will never forget it."
Outside the
church, both Sunni and Shiite Iraqi Muslims lit candles and held up banners
appealing for their Christian countrymen to resist emigrating, and said they
stood by the religious minority.
Abbas
Hassan, a retired civil servant, said "the Christians are the people of
Iraq, for thousands of years, and Christianity is one of the oldest religions
in Iraq."
"We
invite them not to leave Iraq, because all Iraqis share their pain."
Another
retiree, 65-year-old Faruq Baban, said: "I ask them not to emigrate, to
hold their ground, because they are the people of Iraq, the original
citizens."
"It
was an ugly crime that made me cry," he said of the attack, which was
later claimed by an Al-Qaeda front group. "I suffered because they are my
brethren, my fellow countrymen."
Estimates
of the number of Christians living in Iraq before 2003 vary from more than one
million to around 1.5 million. But now they are estimated at fewer than
500,000.
One of the
oldest Christian communities in the world is the Chaldean church, which has
700,000 followers worldwide and uses Aramaic, the language that Jesus Christ
spoke.
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