Christians fleeing Mosul after targeted killings
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
Baghdad, Oct 11, IRNA
Iraq-Unrest
Hundreds of Christians are fleeing Mosul after a string of killings that appear to be singling out the minority group in the northern city, where many had sought refuge from persecution in other parts of Iraq.
Since late September, at least 11 and perhaps as many as 14 Christians have been killed in Mosul, according to government officials and humanitarian groups.
The victims include a doctor, an engineer, two builders, two businessmen and a 15-year-old boy, who was gunned down in front of his home. In some cases, there have been two or three killings on the same day.
A pharmacist was killed Friday by a man who pretended to be an undercover police officer and asked for the pharmacist's identification card, said Khisroo Koran, deputy governor of Nineveh Province, of which Mosul is the capital.
The attacks coincide with an angry dispute over the Iraqi Parliament's decision to drop a provision of the provincial elections law that ensured political representation for Christians and other minorities, before passing the legislation on September 24.
To protest Parliament's action, Christians held demonstrations in Nineveh Province - where about 250,000 Christians live, about 50,000 of them in Mosul - and in Baghdad.
At one demonstration in Nineveh, protestors held up signs demanding the creation of a 19th province governed by Christians that would be linked to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north, according to William Warda, an Iraqi journalist and chairman of the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization, based in Baghdad.
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