Mosul, July 14, 2014
The ISIS terrorist organization that seized a part of Iraq has published on the internet a video with one shocking moment – a militant in black clothes with a sledgehammer is shattering gravestones, breaking them into pieces. This is happening in Mosul, the Northwest Nineveh, at the Mosque of Prophet Jonah, who is venerated by both Christians and Muslims. In one of these graves being destroyed by the man in black, according to tradition the Holy Prophet Jonah is buried, reports the English newspaper Daily Mail.
Thus, according to the eyewitnesses’ evidence, the ISIS extremists have destroyed two cathedrals: one of them (St. Ephraim’s Cathedral) belonging to the Syro-Jacobite Church, while the other one belonged to the Chaldean Catholic Church.
The Islamists desecrated the churches’ altars and plundered their contents, erecting on their domes black banners of ISIS instead of the crosses. There are also reports of an armed attack and pillage of two buildings of the Christian diocesan administrations, situated in the ash-Shurta neighbourhood of Mosul.
Earlier it was reported that the takfirists had destroyed the mosque on the site of the Prophet Jonah’s grave.