Thirty-four Iraqi Christians and a Muslim guard wounded in a deadly al-Qaeda attack on a Baghdad church just over a week ago arrived in France late on Monday for admission to hospitals for treatment.
Bearing bullet and grenade wounds from the Oct. 31 attack, they arrived at Orly airport outside Paris on a plane dispatched to Iraq earlier on Monday to collect them.
The group, traveling with 19 companions, was welcomed at the airport by French Immigration Minister Eric Besson, who said over the weekend that it fitted France’s “tradition of asylum” to take them in.
Photo: AFP
They were immediately loaded into ambulances and sent to several hospitals around Paris.
They were wounded when al-Qaeda gunmen stormed a Syriac Catholic cathedral during Sunday mass, prompting an assault by Iraqi and US security forces.
In all, 44 worshipers, two priests and seven security force personnel died during the seizure of the cathedral and the ensuing shootout when it was stormed by troops. The five militants who carried out the attack were also killed.
About 60 people were wounded in the bloodbath and France swiftly offered to provide specialist treatment for those with the most serious injuries.
France plans a second evacuation flight in the coming weeks to bring out another 93 Christians.
Al-Qaeda said it carried out the church attack to force the release of converts to Islam allegedly being detained by the Coptic Church in Egypt. Days afterward it declared Christians everywhere “legitimate targets.”
“All Christian centers, organizations and institutions, leaders and followers are legitimate targets for the mujahidin [holy warriors] wherever they can reach them,” said a statement by the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), the local branch of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s jihadist network.
An estimated 800,000 Christians lived in Iraq before the US-led invasion of 2003, but that number has since shrunk to about 500,000 in the face of repeated attacks against their community and churches.
Christians in Baghdad have now dwindled to about 150,000, a third of their former population in the capital.
An Iraqi Christian leader in Britain said on Sunday Iraqi Christians should leave the country or face being killed at the hands of al-Qaeda.
“If they stay they will be finished, one by one,” Archbishop Athanasios Dawood told the BBC.
Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters clad in black rallied and marched in Detroit, Michigan, on Monday to demand peace and security for Christians in Iraq.
The rally in Detroit coincided with one in Chicago, where hundreds marched through downtown to a plaza in front of the Dirksen Federal Building.
Organizers said rallies were also planned in London and Paris.
In Detroit, protesters chanted “Wake up America,” “Stop the genocide” and “We demand peace” as they gathered in front of a federal office building.
The rally was organized by members of Michigan’s Chaldean community and other Christians who trace their heritage to the Biblical lands of what is now Iraq.
“The message is this: This massacre is not a one-time event — it’s part of a systematic effort to bring about a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Iraq’s indigenous Christians,” said Wisam Naoum, a rally organizer.
Chaldeans are Iraqi Catholics. Since 2007, thousands of Iraqi Christians have come to the Detroit area, which has one of the nation’s largest communities of people with roots in the Middle East.
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