A report in the U.K. Telegraph says that a decade after the U.S. government overthrew Saddam Hussein’s secular regime, the Christian population has dropped from over a million to as little as 200,000.

Some church buildings in Iraq were built as far back as the ninth century.

Even though many of these structures have survived, they are now protected by blast walls, barbed wire, police vehicles and security cameras. Worshippers are patted down and checked for explosives before being allowed to enter the buildings.

During the Christmas season last year, three bomb attacks killed 37 people in Baghdad. Over 50 were injured.

Iraqi police say the bombings targeted Christians.

The BBC reports that the worst attack happened on Christmas, when a bomb exploded in a parked car at St. John’s Catholic Church in Baghdad. Police reported 26 people killed and 38 more injured.

The Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Baghdad Louis Raphael I Sako says that since 2003, more than a thousand Christians have been killed in Iraq (and others kidnapped and tortured). Sako is calling on Western nations to help end what he calls the “mortal exodus” of Christians from the Middle East.

A report in the U.K. Telegraph says that a decade after the U.S. government overthrew Saddam Hussein’s secular regime, the Christian population has dropped from over a million to as little as 200,000.

The Telegraph also quotes Archdeacon Temathius Esha, the last remaining Christian priest in   Dora, a Bagdad suburb, as saying originally the community had over 30,000 families, now there are only 2,000 left. He says many remaining Christians would leave, if they had the means.

Struan Stevenson is the President of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq. In November of last year he visited the country to investigate the conditions of Christians.

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