“There are many explicit examples. They have chopped off heads, chopped children in half, hanged people on crosses. The stories you hear are so bad they don’t sound true they are so extreme — but I am afraid they are extreme, and true.”

“People are being killed and their homes blown up. They are putting yellow on their houses and saying they are ‘Nazarines’ and not welcome,” Mr White said.

Tens of thousands of refugees fled ahead of the advance of Islamic extremists yesterday, bringing reports of panic and suffering in the latest onslaught by the Isis militant group.

People in the Christian community of Tal Kayf were in bed when Islamist forces descended on the town on Wednesday night. “I heard some gunshots last night and, when I looked outside, I saw a military convoy from the Islamic State . . . shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is greatest),” said Boutros Sargon, who reached the relative safety of Iraqi Kurdistan yesterday afternoon. The Shabak Shia minority in his town had also fled. There were huge tailbacks as refugees tried to pass Kurdish checkpoints on the road to Irbil.

The head of Iraq’s largest Christian denomination, Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako, said that 100,000 Christians had been displaced.

“This is a humanitarian disaster. The churches are occupied, their crosses were taken down,” he told AFP, adding that 1,500 manuscripts had been burnt.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/middleeast/iraq/article4169969.ece

Support to help the Iraqi Christians can be sent through Barnabas Fund here:
http://barnabasfund.org/UK/News/Archives/Stand-with-Mosuls-terrorised-targeted-and-displaced-Christians-today.html