ICC Note: Iraqi Christians returning to Qaraqosh are finding little reason to stay and restart life, as two years of ISIS occupation has all but destroyed the town. The Immaculate Conception Church lies scarred and desecrated from when ISIS used the building and courtyard as a weapons armory and shooting range. Christians are broken hearted to see their homes so destroyed by Islamic terrorists, many find it too painful to return at all.

12/13/2016 Iraq (News Week): For decades, the Immaculate Conception Church in Qaraqosh was the heart of Iraq’s largest Christian town. After two years under Daesh rule, it lies scarred and desecrated.

In the church’s inner courtyard, Daesh fighters set up a shooting range for target practice, leaving behind bullet-riddled female mannequins and hardboard figures when they were driven out.

The yard’s arches and walls are cratered. At one end, empty shell casings carpet its flagstones near piles of trash and sheets of hymn music; a wooden pulpit for sermons sits pockmarked and cracked by bullets at the other, now with a small pink “Hallelujah” flag posted on top.

More than a month after Iraqi forces regained Qaraqosh, the church’s spire cross still hangs at an angle, its inside is blackened by fire and its walls are daubed with Daesh slogans and militant names scrawled on its pillars.

Mass has been held in the Immaculate Conception for the first time in two years and Christians are visiting to see what remains. But few think of returning for good to Qaraqosh, which once had 50,000 residents but is now all but a ghost town.

“Perhaps they should leave it like this and people visit and see what Daesh did,” said Aram Alqastoma, a student who came from a nearby Christian enclave in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region with friends to help clean up the church. “They destroyed everything. And it destroyed my heart to see this.”

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