(ANS) – Following a series of Church Bombings and the bombing of the Assyrian Christian Center in downtown Baghdad , estimates of up to 40,000 for a year total of nearly 100,000 Assyrian Christians have left the country to neighboring Jordan and Syria . “Amidst all the `bad news` emanating from Iraq these days, there is some good!” says Ken Joseph, director of the Assyrian Christian Assistance Center in Baghdad (www.assyrianchristians.com), reporting from the Iraq Donors Conference in Tokyo . “Over the past few weeks in New York, Washington D.C. and Tokyo a flurry of meetings have been held by one of Iraq`s most vulnerable communities — her indigenous people, the Assyrian Christians,” Joseph told ASSIST News Service (ANS). “For the Assyrian Christian Community, this is a major breakthrough — the tacit approval for an autonomous area in their ancestral homeland in Northern Iraq ,” Joseph said.