Terrorists linked to al Qaeda Iraq took more than a hundred Assyrian Christian hostages during a church mass in Baghdad on October 31. Fifty-eight hostages were killed, including two priests, and 75 wounded as the Iraqi police stormed the building.

The Assyrian Chaldean Syriac Student Union of Canada mourns with the families of the victims of Sunday's vicious attacks and strongly condemns the terrorists' disgusting actions. The Assyrian Christians have been a constant target of insurgents attempting to rid the country of the ancient community, and the Iraqi and American governments have stood by and done little to help.

If Canada continues to do nothing to help preserve Iraq's heterogenous population, and specifically Iraq's ancient Assyrian population, then the Iraq war will have been a direct cause of an extinction of an entire population from their indigenous lands.

We urge the Canadian government to work with Iraqi officials to help secure Iraq's Assyrians throughout Iraq and to implement local Iraqi security specifically focused on the protection of minority populations in the areas where Assyrians and other minorities live.

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