BEIRUT: Palestinian mothers weep over the bodies of children, whose expressionless faces indicate their untimely fate. Israeli rockets strike three-story buildings, turning homes into rubble. These were the images broadcast across all eight Lebanese television channels Monday, in what may be the world’s first unified news bulletin in support of Gaza.   It was […]

By Dominic Evans and Raheem Salman, BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The head of Iraq’s largest church said on Sunday that Islamic State militants who drove Christians out of Mosul were worse than Mongol leader Genghis Khan and his grandson Hulagu who ransacked medieval Baghdad.

Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako led a wave of condemnation for the Sunni Islamists who demanded Christians either convert, submit to their radical rule and pay a religious levy or face death by the sword. At the Vatican, Pope Francis decried what he said was the persecution of Christians in the birthplace of their faith, while U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the Islamic State’s actions could constitute a crime against humanity.

Hundreds of Christian families left Mosul ahead of Saturday’s ultimatum, many of them stripped of their possessions as they fled for safety. They formed the remnants of a community which once numbered in the tens of thousands and traced its presence in Mosul to the earliest years of Christianity.

People of other faiths in the once diverse city, including Shi’ites, Yazidis and Shabaks, have also fled from the ultra-conservative militants, who have blown up mosques and shrines and seized property of fleeing minorities. "The heinous crime of the Islamic State was carried out not just against Christians, but against humanity," Sako told a special church service in east Baghdad where around 200 Muslims joined Christians in solidarity. "How in the 21st century could people be forced from their houses just because they are Christian, or Shi’ite or Sunni or Yazidi?" he asked. "Christian families have been expelled from their houses and their valuables were stolen and …their houses and property expropriated in the name of the Islamic State."

  BEIRUT: Despite reports that the government had renewed its interest in rebuilding the rail line between Beirut and Tabarja, the closest anyone is likely to come to buying a ticket is still an evening drinking $9 vodka tonics at an exclusive bar that opened recently in the historical Mar Mikhael train station. “This is […]

  The father of the child who was filmed abusing a Syrian boy has been arrested, announced the Internal Security Forces Intelligence Bureau on Sunday. It said that the father, identified as A.Aa., was arrested from inside the van he owns in the al-Raml al-Ali area in Beirut’s southern suburbs of Dahieh at 2:30 am […]

Christians were fleeing Iraq’s jihadist-held city of Mosul en masse after mosques relayed an ultimatum giving them a few hours to leave. Messages telling Christians to leave the city by today were blared through loudspeakers from the city’s mosques yesterday. The Islamist State jihadist group took over the city last month. A statement was issued […]

  Just days after the militant group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria said they killed hundreds of Syrians, dozens of Iraqi Christian families are now fleeing the ISIS-controlled city of Mosul, hoping to avoid a similar fate. On Friday, the al Qaeda splinter group issued an ultimatum to Iraqi Christians living in Mosul […]

  A video of a child beating up another minor, who is a Syrian national according to some reports, went viral online, prompting the Ministry of Social Affairs and the judiciary to act and demand an investigation in the incident. The video that was posted on YouTube shows Abbas, a Lebanese child who hails from the […]

  BEIRUT: The city’s food and beverage offerings are a pesky subject to document as Beirut’s hip – and foreigner-rich – neighborhoods come and go every two years, almost like clockwork. A 5-year-old guide hailing Monnot as the epitome of nightlife is as much of a relic as a travel diary from the Civil War […]

  Two Lebanese nationals, holding the Australian citizenship, were among the 298 people on board the Malaysian jetliner that was shot down over Ukraine. According to Voice of Lebanon radio (100.5), Albert and Mary Rizk are among the victims who died along with dozens of others in the tragedy on Thursday. They live in Melbourne, […]

  Authorities have updated the death toll to 298 people killed when Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, near the Russian border, to include three infants not counted earlier. That number includes: 189 Dutch nationals, 44 Malaysians, 27 Australians, 12 Indonesians, nine passengers believed to be from the UK, four each from […]