ICC Note: The iconic Clock Church of Mosul, Iraq has been destroyed via explosives by Islamic State militants. Local sources say they stripped the church of anything worth looting before evacuating the area and demolishing the historical structure. This is another example of ISIS’s campaign of wiping out the history and culture of Christians in their territorial conquest of the region. The condemnable act has devastated the Christian community in Iraq, as they are continuing to face existential threat at the hands of the Islamic State.

04/27/2016 Iraq (Brietbart): The distinctive bell tower with the clock had been given to Iraqi Christians by the Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III. The church, historically known as the “Church of the Miraculous Madonna,” had been under the care of the Dominican Fathers until being devastated Monday morning with the use of explosives.

The Church was inaugurated on August 4, 1873, and the clock tower was added later when Empress Eugenie donated it in appreciation for efforts made by the Dominican Fathers during a typhoid epidemic that started in 1879. The clock tower was completed in 1882.

Islamic State forces have been under pressure in Mosul, with Kurdish forces to the north and Iraqi government and Shia militia forces to the south threatening to retake it.

Official sources of the Chaldean Patriarchate have attributed the sacrilegious act of vandalism to militants of the Islamic State that has controlled the city since June 9, 2014.

According to local sources, the jihadists evacuated the area around the church and ransacked the building for whatever could be looted before detonating the explosive charges.

The Chaldean Patriarchate strongly condemned this “targeting of the Christian Church,” which it called “a grave sin against God and man” undertaken to erase Iraq’s Christians memory in favor of a state of strangers who commit terror in the name of Islam.

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