Thousands of Iraqi Christians from the northern city of Mosul on Sunday protested a wave of attacks against their community.
The protests follow a series of fatal attacks against Christians in the city and its environs that community leaders say are designed to scare Christian families out of the region ahead of the March 7 parliamentary election, dpa reported.
"Some 250 families have fled their homes for villages in Hamdaniya, Bartalla and al-Koush because of the armed operations targeting Christians in Mosul," Draid Zuma, a spokesman for the city's Assyrian Christian community told the German Press Agency dpa on Sunday.
"The deterioration of security, the killing of Christians and their being kidnapped from their homes is forcing them to flee for towns with a majority-Christian population," he said.
At least nine Christians have been murdered in the city since February 14. At least 13 have been killed since January.
Christian politicians from Mosul see in the recent violence a repeat of the attacks that preceded the January 2009 provincial polls there, when some 450 Christian families fled the city after at least 35 members of the minority community were killed.
Already, some 1,500 Christian university students from Qaraqosh, roughly 30 kilometres to the east of Mosul, are being held at home because of fears their buses may be targeted, the head of Mosul University, Said al-Diwaji, told dpa.
Politicians and community leaders last week accused the provincial government, Baghdad, and Kurdish parties and allied peshmerga militias that share responsibility for policing the area of not doing enough to protect the region's Christians from what they called "political" crimes.
Ghazy Furman, a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Party, on Sunday denied accusations that Kurds had been complicit in the attacks.
"These accusations are false," he told dpa. "Christians targeted in Mosul are fleeing to Kurdish areas, under peshmerga control. If Kurds stood behind the killing and targeting of Christians, why would Christians seek refuge in these areas?"
"These accusations are part of a media attack being used for election campaigning," Furman said, accusing al-Qaeda and remnants of the former ruling Baath Party of spreading the rumours to harm Kurds' reputation.
Mosul and its environs are among the most ethnically and religiously diverse areas of Iraq, and among the most dangerous. Despite successive pushes that police say have netted hundreds of suspected militants, insurgents continue to launch deadly attacks against citizens of all faiths, almost daily.
To the west of the country, in the heavily Sunni city of Ramadi, a member of al-Anbar's provincial council on Sunday escaped assassination, police said.
Ashour Hamid escaped unscathed after a car bomb exploded as his motorcade passed by, police told dpa, but one person was killed and one was injured.
...