Nine out of ten Orthodox Christians in Iraq have been displaced by the terrorist group ISIS.
Ghattas Hazim, the Greek Orthodox Bishop for Baghdad, says he fears for the future of Christianity in Iraq and the surrounding region because of the terrorists. He says that of 600 Orthodox families remain in Baghdad because of fears the terrorists will take over the nation’s capital.
He said the only Christians left in Mosul are the ones who can afford to pay the “tax” levied on them by the terrorists or who are too ill or infirm to flee.
Hazim said that western nations, despite saying they are working to help the Christians displaced by the terrorists, have done nothing to help them.
“It is not true that the West is facilitating the emigration of Christians,” Hazim told The Christian Post. “I know many Christians and Orthodox in particular who went to embassies and did not get visas. Others resorted to the United Nations and other international organizations in order to emigrate and it did not work out.”
Hazim vowed to stay in Baghdad to keep the Word of God alive in the city no matter what may happen with the terrorists.
“I will carry the word of God to my parish in Baghdad and Kuwait: Fear not, little flock, for I am with you,” Hazim said. “If they persecute you, remember that they persecuted me before you. We will not fear, because this is not the first time in history that this has happened. We will stay, as long as faith remains and as long as our God exists, we will remain present.”
A 15-year-old ISIS member captured by Kurdish forces has answered one of the questions behind why members of Islamic terrorist groups carry out suicide bomb attacks.
Kareem Mufleh says that the leaders of ISIS pump drugs into their fighters and suicide bombers so that they will carry out their missions without questions.
Muflah says that he had no choice to join ISIS.
“They captured my village and gave me a choice,” Mufleh said. “Either join ISIS or be beheaded.”
Mulfah says that the drug given to the suicide bombers was an anti-anxiety drug. They would give the drugs in such levels that the bombers would go insane and then are given a suicide belt and told where to go to carry out the attack.
Mufleh had levels of the anti-anxiety drug Zolam in his system.
The teen also described the brutality of the group. He was part of an attack on a wedding where ISIS slaughtered the bride because the wedding dress showed the bride’s arms and neck.
A security official for ISIS captured by anti-ISIS rebels admitted that when they captured any Yazidi village, they would separate the virgin women to use as rewards for terrorists who carry out successful attacks.
The ISIS official from Raqqa revealed that they are routinely taking Christian and Yazidi women and having them repeatedly raped by terrorist fighters as a way to increase the morale of their fighters.
The ISIS official said the terrorists would “marry” the virgins and then most of the time divorce them after the “wedding night’ so they could be given to other terrorists.
The report says that the leaders within ISIS are taking great efforts to keep the truth of what they’re doing to captured women from the public so it doesn’t bring them negative response from groups sympathetic to their views.
“The inner circle of leaders and security officials, and were careful that this issue should not be known as much as possible to the civilians,” the report stated.
The Islamic State has stated all women who are not Muslim should be used as sex slaves.
Three teenage girls from Colorado were arrested at a German airport during an attempt to travel to Turkey to join ISIS.
The three girls left their homes on Friday, telling their families that they were either late for school when the schools called to report them missing or that they were home sick. When the girls were gone later that day, her parents called police.
“Farah stated that he checked and found that his daughters’ passports were missing along with $2000 in cash,” a runaway report filed by the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office states. “It is unknown what clothing they were wearing today, but they both wear headscarves as part of their religion.”
The FBI was notified after the discovery of the missing passport and flagged passports for all three girls. The girls were captured in Germany and put on planes back to the United States after telling FBI investigators that they were attempting to join ISIS.
Officials have not stated if the girls will be charged with attempting to assist a terrorist organization.
The man who shot and killed a Canadian soldier in the capital yesterday before being shot and killed by RCMP and security personnel has been identified as 32-year-old Michael Zehaf-Bibeau.
The attack was the second terrorist attack by ISIS sympathetic Islamic extremists this week.
“We will not be intimidated. Canada will never be intimidated,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said following the shooting.
“In the days to come we will learn about the terrorist and any accomplices he may have had,” Harper vowed. “[This will] lead us to strengthen our resolve and redouble our efforts” in the fight against terror.
Officials say that Zehaf-Bibeau’s father was a businessman from Quebec who went to fight in Libya in 2011 and that the gunman also spent time in Libya.
After initial searches for more gunmen, the Canadian government now says they believe that Zahef-Bibeau acted alone.
Turkey reversed course Monday and said they would allow Iraqi Kurds to join Turkish Kurds in the battle for Kobani.
The news came as the United States air-dropped weapons to the Kurds for the first time to help them as they go forward in their battle against ISIS.
The move by Turkey comes at the request of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry who asked the Turkish government to “get the peshmerga or other groups” into the Kobani area to make sure the terrorists were not able to seize control of the town.
Syrian Kurds, who have been making a bold stand against the terrorists, were allied with the PKK, which attempted to overthrow the Turkish government for decades. America considers the PKK a terrorist organization and said that the Kurds fighting the terrorists have no PKK affiliation.
“We understand fully the fundamentals of (Ankara’s) opposition and ours to any kind of terrorist group, and particularly, obviously, the challenges they face with respect to the PKK,” Kerry told reporters. “We cannot take our eye off the prize here. It would be irresponsible of us, as well as morally very difficult, to turn your back on a community fighting ISIL.”
ISIS reportedly has captured three fighter jets and is training former Iraqi military pilots to fly them.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the planes were taken when the terrorists captured the al-Jarrah airport east of Aleppo. The pilots have been making training flights around the airport in preparation for attacks on western aircraft that has been targeting terrorist strongholds.
“They have trainers, Iraqi officers who were pilots before for (former Iraqi president) Saddam Hussein,” Rami Abdulrahman of the SOHR told Reuters. “People saw the flights, they went up many times from the airport and they are flying in the skies outside the airport and coming back.”
U.S. Central Command would not confirm the reports of the ISIS pilots.
“We’re not aware of (Islamic State) conducting any flight operations in Syria or elsewhere,” U.S. Central Command spokesman Colonel Patrick Ryder said. “We continue to keep a close eye on (Islamic State) activity in Syria and Iraq and will continue to conduct strikes against their equipment, facilities, fighters and centres of gravity, wherever they may be.”
Social media accounts connected to ISIS have shown captured aircraft.
“They didn’t feed us much. I used to pass out a lot, but I would make trouble for him as much as possible and fight when I could,” a 15-year-old girl called Sara said. “Many times I thought of suicide but I kept thinking of my family and my brother. I lived only for them.”
Sara is one of a group of Yazidis captured by ISIS who were able to escape to safety in Iraq. She’s now speaking out about the conditions they experienced and the horrors of torment from their captors.
Sara, her brother, pregnant sister-in-law and other Yazidis were captured when trying to escape Sinjar. They had been hiding in a farmhouse.
Sara said all the women were loaded into trucks and then the terrorists gunned down all the men. Sara’s brother was among the men slaughtered.
She said she was sold to a pair of older ISIS terrorists who were living in a mansion taken from a local family. The men would regularly drain blood from her body; leaving her so weak she could barely handle daily activities such as eating or drinking.
She said that Christian women were forced to wear Muslim attire by the terrorist and were kept chained until they would renounce Christ and follow Islam.
Kurdish fighters were able to stop an advance by the Islamic terrorist group ISIS into the town of Kobani but could not stop suicide bombers from launching homicide bomber attacks in another Iraqi province.
The bombings happned in the Qara Tappah district in Diyala province. One bomber blew himself up at the gateway to the offices of the main Kurdish political party and two others blew themselves up in cars loaded with explosives minutes later.
The terrorists involved were reportedly foreigners who came to Iraq to fight with ISIS.
The CIA now reports ISIS has a total strength of 31,500 terrorists in Iraq and Syria. The attacks in Diyala follow 45 people being killed in similar attacks around Baghdad the prior day.
Kurdish fighters were able to top the advance into Kobani but ISIS has taken over at least 350 villages close to the main city. At least 150,000 people in the region have fled across the Turkish border.
Islamic terrorist group ISIS is selling young Yazidi girls for $1,000 while forcing young Yazidi boys to train to be used in front line battles.
A report released Sunday shows the group is forcing women, teens and even pre-teen girls into forced marriages with ISIS terrorists. Women who resist being converted to Islam and forced into marriage are used as “slaves” for the “enjoyment” of the terrorist fighters.
Yazidi men and boys are forced to convert to Islam and fight or be beheaded.
The report included eyewitness testimony from a 15-year-old girl who had been kidnapped by ISIS and held for three weeks until she was able to escape from a terrorist who had “purchased” her.
The girl said that she saw girls as young as 12 being forced into marriages with soldiers and others that were already pregnant from their captors.
ISIS says that they are only treating women the way dictated by true Islam. They say the men who have been “converted” to fight with them came willingly and that no one was forced to join their ranks.