The Voice of the suffering in Middle East

Still, with another 12,000 houses still to be repaired or rebuilt, Father Halemba—who serves as acting chairman of the Nineveh Reconstruction Committee (NRC)—said much more work had to be done, alongside efforts to secure significant funding.

Bartella, a Christian village on the Nineveh Plains in Iraq, was the first of the region’s communities to be liberated from the grip of ISIS, freed in fall 2016. Recently, after three years of exile in Kurdistan, the first six Syriac-Orthodox families have returned to their newly restored homes.

There is massive destruction to the country’s infrastructure and the trauma of brutal warfare has left people—especially the young—with deep psychological scars, which are causing anguish, sickness and even death.

Now that Mosul has been recaptured from ISIS, will Christians be able to return to their homes there soon? It’s too soon to tell, according to Syriac-Catholic Archbishop Petros Mouche of Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq. He spoke with international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need.

Work has begun on the rebuilding of the first 100 Christian homes on the Nineveh plain, a region devastated by ISIS.

The remains of five Christians abducted by jihadist rebels four years ago from the Christian town of Maaloula have at last been laid to rest in their home town.