ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - At least 30 Christian families migrated from Nineveh’s Hamdaniyah in July, due to economic and security reasons, a local official told Rudaw on Tuesday.
“Thirty families migrated from Hamdaniyah in July,” Issam Bahnam, the district’s mayor told Rudaw, adding that the families previously left the area but had returned.
Bahnam claimed that the numbers of families leaving the area on monthly basis “did not exceed two families” before with most leaving for Jordan and Lebanon.
The Christian town of Hamdaniyah is located some 20 kilometers southeast of Mosul that was heavily affected when the Islamic State (ISIS) controlled swathes of Iraq in 2014.
The official put the toll of Christians in the area to 10 thousand, noting that they have now decreased to about 5 thousand.
“We have called on the authorities but they have not solved the [migration] issue,” Bahnam noted.
