Soldier's heads were hoisted on poles as they were killed in Syria.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Although Christians have lived in northern Iraq and Syria for nearly two-thousand years, and at least six hundred years before Islam, today they face extinction across the region.  "Our people are disappearing," Canon Andrew White, head of the Anglican Church in Iraq "It looks as though the end could be very near," he told the BBC. A week ago, Christians were warned to either leave the city of Mosul and other areas under Islamic State control, or they would have to pay a tax or be put to death. Today, nobody has heard from those Christians and nobody knows what is happening to them.

Are they being quietly "put to the sword" as this militant strain of Islam asks they be? The Human Rights Watch reported on July 14 that homes in Mosul were painted with red letters to indicate Christian homes. Other homes of Shiite Muslims were also adorned.

Christians who have escaped reported being deprived of all their belongings except their clothes. Jewelry, money, automobiles, even food and water were confiscated on the edge of town as Christians were forced to pass through Islamic State checkpoints.  However, we know a number of Christians remained, for many reasons. Some were too destitute to travel or had weak and infirm family who could not make the desert trek to safety.  Those that left were warned "don't even dream of returning."

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