Intense fighting in Baghdad underscores desperate situation

The Islamic State (IS, formally ISIS) terror militia which has taken control of vast swaths of Syria and Iraq and is threatening to march on Jerusalem, issued an edict over the weekend ordering Christians living in these areas to either convert to Islam, pay a special tax, leave the area or face execution. Reports indicate that the vast majority of Christians living in northern Iraq have fled to Kurdish controlled areas in and around the city of Kirkuk, while pictures of centuries-old churches in Ninevah Province of northern Iraq engulfed in flames have already begun circulating on jihadist websites and social media. The al-Malaki regime in Baghdad led a chorus of international condemnation of IS’s actions, but the terror militias continuing battlefield success offers little hope of relief for Iraq’s besieged Christians.

“What is being done by the Daesh terrorist gang against our Christian citizens in Ninevah province, and their aggression against the churches and houses of worship in the areas under their control reveals beyond any doubt the extremist criminal and terrorist nature of this group,” al-Maliki said in a statement released by his office, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group. “Those people, through their crimes, are revealing their true identity and the false allegations made here and there about the existence of revolutionaries among their ranks.”

Meanhwhile, bombings in Baghdad claimed by IS killed 27 lives on Saturday, an indication of the lack of security in the capital. Fighting has also raged in several other cities.

Elsewhere, Western security services are bracing for what many are warning could be a tidal wave of jihadist violence in their own countries in coming years, as thousands of fighters in Syria who hold passports from Western countries begin to return with enhanced warfighting skills and radicalized ideology.

“It’s something that gives us really extreme, extreme concern,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. told ABC News last week. “In some ways, it’s more frightening than anything I think I’ve seen as attorney general.”

Here is a video analyzing the situation regarding IS in Iraq and Syria

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