News

     Armenia – PanARMENIAN — Pro-Kurdish Party Leader Ahmet Türk apologized to Armenians and Assyrians for 1915 tragic events, Dogan News Agency reports. “Kurds probably contributed to empire’s cultural wealth annihilation. We feel ashamed when looking at our Armenian and Assyrian brothers,” Mr. Türk stressed, adding that Kurds are always …

Editing by Michael Christie and Matthew Jones MOSUL – Reuters — Tensions between Kurds and Sunni Arabs are rising in Iraq’s volatile northern city of Mosul and the surrounding province following local elections in January which saw Sunni representation jump dramatically. Kurdish-led provincial council members and Kurdish-run towns have vowed …

     PARIS – AFP — Iraq’s Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi urged Iraq’s Christian minority not to flee the country on Wednesday and called on the international community to help protect it from extremists. According to Christian leaders, 250,000 of the 800,000 Christians who lived in Iraq six years ago, …

By Tona Ishaq Mosul, Iraq – AINA — Since the invasion 2003 the situation of the Christian Assyrians in Iraq has deteriorated. Churches have been destroyed, several priests have been killed and at the end of last year thousands of Christians were forced to leave the city of Mosul in …

     Damascus – CDF — Committees for the Defense of Democratic Freedoms and Human Rights in Syria (CDF) condemned the arbitrary transferring procedures by the Syrian authorities against the Assyrian Syrian activist and writer Osama Edward Mousa Kario , member of the C.D.F , and other Syrian citizens . C.D.F …

       Al Hamdanyia, North Iraq – AINA — Thousands of Assyrians participated in a procession through the Assyrian town of Baghdede to celebrate Palm Sunday according to the Syriac Orthodox Church rite. The town of Baghdede lies just a few kilometers from the city of Mosul where there are …

     Kirkuk – AsiaNews — The US troop pullout is creating a “vacuum’ that could end up in “civil war” and “Iraq’s division”, said Mgr Louis Sako, archbishop of Kirkuk, as he confirmed the death of five Iraqi Christians killed in late March and early April. Iraq’s “ethnic and religious …

     WASHINGTON – ICC — International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that on April 1 and 2, four Iraqi Christians were killed in Baghdad and Kirkuk. Though the perpetrators of the murders are not yet indicated, Islamic fundamentalists, criminal gangs and other armed groups have been behind attacks against Christians …

     USA, Modesto CA – ado — the newly appointed US-born bishop of the Western California diocese of the Assyrian Church of the East, secretly ordered the priests, deacons and sub-deacons of St. Zaia Cathedral in Modesto that they, and all other clergy of the Assyrian Church of the East …

     Northern Iraq – AINA — Authorities in northern Iraq’s Dohuk province have said they will not allow any celebration of the traditional Assyrian New Year known as Akitu. The celebration, which is normally held on the first of April, marks the beginning of the Assyrian new year according to …