ICC Note: The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Qaraqosh, Iraq was full of Christians to celebrate mass after more than two years of occupation by the Islamic State. The charred insides of the church did not stop the many returning Christians from celebrating mass. This is just one of the many towns surrounding Mosul that have recently been rid of the jihadists.

11/05/2016 Iraq (Christian Post): After more than two years of intense suffering and persecution at the hands of the Islamic State terror group in Iraq, Christians are celebrating mass inside a charred church near Mosul, marking further success in the military campaign to drive out the extremists.

Reuters reports that around a dozen Iraqi Christians were gathered at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Qaraqosh on Sunday for the celebration.

“Today Qaraqosh is free of Daesh (Islamic State),” Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Mosul Butrus Moshe told worshipers.

Qaraqosh is among the towns surrounding Mosul that have been taken back from IS’ control in the ongoing offensive, as Iraqi troops backed by U.S. air forces are aiming to retake one of IS’ last remaining strongholds in Iraq.

The terror group, which has also captured a number of cities in Syria, has been slaughtering and driving Christians out of their ancestral homelands for the past two years, threatening them with death or enslavement if they stayed.

This forced many of the 125,000 or so Christians in the region to abandon their homes in or around Mosul, but now they are hoping to see IS driven out for good, so that they can return and live in peace.

“Our role today is to remove all the remnants of Daesh [ISIS],” the archbishop continued. “This includes erasing sedition, separation and conflicts, which victimized us.”

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