On 13 May assailants broke into a Christian home and assaulted two elderly women, a mother and daughter.
The women were repeatedly stabbed with a knife, and their gold and money was stolen. The two victims were hospitalised in Mosul. The daughter, who sustained a violent head injury, remains in a critical condition. Two men are reported as having been arrested for the attack.
Murder not robbery
It was noted that the nature of the attack points towards not a robbery, but a desire to kill the women. The area in which they live, although liberated from ISIS, still has poor infrastructure, security concerns, and militia aggression. A local said that the area is ‘the most targeted’ by militias saying: ‘They are trying to change the demographic distribution of this particular village by making Christian life there very difficult.’ People are frightened to give the names of attackers due to militia support.
A local Syriac Orthodox priest agrees with this, saying: ‘You know who could be the ones who may attack Christians. Everyone knows them. But no one can give you the names since they are supported by the militia.’
Juliana Taimoorazy, President of Iraqi Christian Relief Council, said: ‘There will be some who will brush this off as an isolated incident and others may present it as a gang-related crime. This is, in fact, yet another orchestrated tactic to intimidate and push the Christian community, the indigenous children of the land, out of their homes.’
