ISIS Continues to Ransack Christian Churches, Homes, and Cemeteries
Continuing its onslaught against Christians in the Middle East, ISIS has laid waste to numerous Assyrian churches and homes in Iraq while vandalizing Christian monasteries and cemeteries throughout the region.
Last week, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria turned 10 Assyrian homes into ruins while injuring several in a bomb blast that also damaged a monastery of Assyrian nuns in northern Iraq, the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA) reports. This was part of a new barrage of concerted attacks recently waged on Christians in the region by ISIS.
The terrorist group recently vowed to renew its attacks by threatening to bomb a number of other nearby villages.
ISIS also ransacked two cemeteries in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk the day after Thanksgiving, digging up and opening graves on the sites while destroying crosses and tombstones. Even though the destruction of the grave sites used by the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Assyrian Church of the East was credited to ISIS terrorists, AINA reports that local authorities would not identify the individuals who vandalized the cemeteries.
The defiled graves and demolished tombstones were captured by AINA in published photos displaying graves that were smashed open by ISIS members, along with tombstones that were uprooted and knocked from their original placements.