Iraqi Christians, Turkmen, Yazidis and other minorities have faced persecution at the hands of Isis since the group's bloody rampage began across northern Iraq in 2014.
Thousands of Christians and Yazidis fled their homes in Mosul when militants ordered them to convert, pay a special tax or be put to death, leaving more than 150,000 displaced across the country.
Now, thousands of Christian men are joining a new Iraqi militia in the Nineveh plains in a bid to protect the few remaining towns and villages from falling into the hands of militants.
The Catholic Herald reports that 4,000 men have joined the Nineveh Plains Protection Units, which was founded by the Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM), the primary political party of Assyrians in Iraq, and is backed by the Iraqi Government and the Kurdish Peshmerga.
The majority of Iraq's Christians are ethnic Chaldo-Assyrians who have lived in the region for thousands of years.
Syria's economy has been set back more than 30 years by its brutal civil war, and economists fear it may never recover Isis has advanced across huge parts of Iraq and Syria The organisation reportedly has 500 Assyrian Christian troops protecting towns from Isis in the Ninevah Plain, another 500 in training and a further 3,000 waiting to be trained.
The militia is being funded by Assyrian diaspora in countries such as United States, Australia and Sweden, according to the Herald.
The ADM says the militia's main aim to “protect the remaining Assyrian lands from further attacks by ISIS and liberate the Assyrian homeland of the Nineveh Plain”.
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http://report24.co.uk/article/81408/thousands-of-iraqi-christians-form-their-own-militia-to-fight-isis-militants-in-northern-iraq
