Islamic militants have seized a monastery in northern Iraq, kicking out its Christian monks as well as Christian residents of Mosul.Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS) insurgents stormed the ancient Mar Benham monastery in the Christian town of Qaraqosh Sunday, near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which was overrun by ISIS on 10 June. Mar Benham is a 4th century monastery run by the Syriac Catholic church.
A member of the Syriac clergy said the monks pleaded to be allowed to save some of the monastery's relics but the ISIS fighters refused and ordered them to leave on foot with only the clothes on their back.
"You have no place here anymore, you have to leave immediately," one of the militants told the monks, according to the clergyman.
The monks then walked several kilometers along a road and were eventually picked up by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters who drove them to Qaraqosh, AFP reported Monday.
Christian families in the area said that as well as the monks there may have been another nine people living in the monastery.
Over the weekend hundreds of families from minority religions fled Mosul, a once multi-cultural, cosmopolitan city, which is the second largest in Iraq. Other groups, who have been persecuted in the Mosul area, include Yazidis, Shabak and Shiite Turkmen populations.
Leaders of Iraq's Chaldean church said that Mosul is now virtually emptied of Christians for the first time in almost two millennia. Mosul Christians are mostly Assyrians, or Chaldean's, known as the Church of the East and are an eastern rite of the Catholic Church.
The ISIS insurgents issued an ultimatum to all Christians that they had until 19 July to either convert to Islam, leave or pay a special tax. If they don't comply "then there is nothing to give them but the sword," read the ominous ISIS threat.
But ISIS's treatment of Shia Muslims has been much worse than their treatment of Christians. 13 Shia mosques and shrines have been destroyed and there are reports of Shiites being held captive for ransom, repeatedly beaten and in some cases murdered.