The Council of Oriental Orthodox Churches in Great Britain (COOC), whose member Churches include the Armenian, Coptic, Eritrean, Ethiopian, Syrian and Indian Malabar, view with concern the bomb attacks that targeted a number of Churches in Baghdad and Mosul yesterday evening.

The Council of Oriental Orthodox Churches in Great Britain (COOC), whose member Churches include the Armenian, Coptic, Eritrean, Ethiopian, Syrian and Indian Malabar, view with concern the bomb attacks that targeted a number of Churches in Baghdad and Mosul yesterday evening.

The Christian communities of Iraq, some 3% of the overall indigenous population, have a long and traditional history of peaceful coexistence with Muslims that spans long centuries. They consider themselves an integral and indivisible part of Iraq and its hopes for the future.

Such terrible and worrisome attacks on places of worship serve nobody: they are alien to our understanding of religion, and we believe that they only serve to create sectarian strife where none has existed before. It does not benefit Iraqis – whether Muslim or Christian – to engage in any such attacks that only cloud our hope for the future unity, stability and independence of this country.

We express solidarity with our own communities, as much as with all Iraqis during those difficult times, in deploring those attacks. We call for national unity in order to serve the interests of Iraq as it strives to come to terms with the turbulence of past decades.

In so doing, we re-iterate the words of all Christian and Muslim leaders both inside and outside Iraq who have stressed the need to respect the rights of Christians and those of other religious faiths and their rights to live in their home, Iraq, peacefully.


Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God  (Mt 5:9)