A British vicar based in Baghdad said Islamic State
militants hounded Christians out of their homes and threatened to kill
their children if they did not convert to Islam
Barbaric: The children were killed by Islamic State militants (file photo)
Barbaric Islamic State militants have beheaded four Christian children in Iraq for refusing to convert to Islam, according to a British vicar based in Baghdad.
Cannon
Andrew White claims the beheadings took place in a Christian enclave
close to Baghdad which has been recently overrun by Islamic State.
Cannon
White, who has been ordered by the Archbishop of Canterbury to leave
Iraq for his own safety, is one of only a handful of Christian leaders
in the country.
He said: “Things were bad in Baghdad, there were
bombs and shootings and our people were being killed, so many of our
people fled back to Nineveh, their traditional home.
“It was
safer, but then one day, ISIS – Islamic State. They came in and they
hounded all of them out. They killed huge numbers, they chopped their
children in half, they chopped their heads off, and they moved north and
it was so terrible what happened.”
Islamic State forced
Christians to convert to Islam on pain of death, he said. “They came to
one of our people the other day, one of the Christians.
“They said to one man, an adult, ‘Either you say the words of conversion to Islam or we kill all your children’.
“He
was desperate, he said the words. And then he phoned, me and said,
‘Abouna [Father], I said the words, does that mean that Yesua [Jesus]
doesn’t love me any more?’ I said, ‘Yesua still loves you, he will
always loves you.’”
He also told of the fate of a group of Christian young people.
Speaking
to the Orthodox Christian Network, he said: “Islamic State turned up
and said to the children, you say the words that you will follow
Mohammed.
“The children, all under 15, four of them, said no, we
love Yesua, we have always loved Yesua, we have always followed Yesua,
Yesua has always been with us.
“They said, ‘Say the words.’ They
said, ‘No, we can’t.’ They chopped all their heads off. How do you
respond to that? You just cry.”
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