Vicar of Baghdad: We need military action NOW Daily Mail

  President said the speed of the Islamic State advance was surprising, and there is no quick fix for the problem

  But was definitive that U.S. would not be dragged back into ground confrontations in the country

  U.S. military sources revealed that more strikes had been made against IS mortars and convoys

I have just returned from a secret visit to Qaraqosh – once the largest Christian town in Iraq, but no longer.

Today, Qaraqosh stands 90 per cent empty, desecrated by the gunmen of the fanatical Islamic State terror group now in control. The majority of the town’s 50,000 people have fled, fearing that, like other Christians in this region, they will be massacred.

The militants, in a further act of sacrilege, have established their administrative posts in the abandoned churches.

My visit, under the noses of the gunmen, was frightening – but that is nothing to the terror of the poor souls left behind.

Since I went to St George’s Anglican church in Baghdad in 2003 – the only Anglican church in the city – I have seen countless terrible things. Many of my congregation have been killed or mutilated in the years of violence.

But I have never witnessed anything on the scale, or which has affected me quite so dreadfully as on this visit to the north of Iraq.

In the nearby city of Irbil, I found many of those Christians who had fled. Some 30,000 refugees are packed into the Kurdish capital, forming a new Christian suburb.

I spoke to one woman who had survived the massacres in Qaraqosh. She had a bandaged left hand. When IS soldiers could not remove her gold wedding ring, they had simply hacked off her finger. She wept as she told me.

Comment

Please remember to prayer for Canon Andrew White and our fellow believers in Iraq,  Today in the west we can go to Church in relative safety,  but  our fellow believers in Iraq are being attacked and murdered by Islamic fundamentalists because they're Christians.

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Further Reading:

MAURICE GLASMAN: This is a battle for civilisation... the UK cannot remain neutral

  Islamic State fanatics seize towns and tell terrified Yazidi 'Become Muslims by noon today... or we kill all of you'

War victims flee back to Syria as refugee camp in Lebanon is burned to the ground by invading Islamic State fighters

Bombing in Iraq could last weeks, says Obama as U.S. launches air strikes... but he insists there will be no boots on the ground