More Christian blood in Mosul, car bomb kills Christian university student
ICC Note: On January 8, a Christian university student was killed by a car bomb in Mosul, igniting fear among the faithful that a renewed campaign of anti-Christian violence is underway. Only a day earlier, a Christian teacher was murdered in the same city. According to a census taken in the 1980’s there were 1.4 million Christians in Iraq. Today, less than 400,000 remain.
01/08/2013 Iraq (AN) – More Christian blood was shed today in Mosul, northern Iraq. A Christian university student was in fact killed by a car bomb, a day after the body of a 54-year-old Christian teacher, Shdha Elias, was found, her throat cut.
These deaths, involving members of the Christian minority, are an illustration of the rising tensions in the city and across the country as Sunnis, Shias, Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen vye for power and control.
In Mosul, the car bomb exploded this morning in front of a supermarket in al Alamia, near the city’s university, local sources told AsiaNews.
The dead man was Ayyoub Fauzi Auyyoub Al Sheikh, a Christian medical student on his last year of study. Eyewitnesses said he died instantly, and that dozens of people were wounded from the blast, which caused major material damages.
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Since the US invasion of 2003, which led to the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s Christian community lost more than half of its members.
In the case of the Christian teacher, whose body was found yesterday, other anonymous sources said that she “lived alone” and was “an easy target for criminals.” For them, she “was probably killed during a robbery.” Yesterday, after her body was recovered and prepared, she was buried right away.
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