After capturing Mosul, jihadist Islamic State militants have now also taken hold of the villages in the Nineveh Plain which had been historical strongholds of local Christian communities in ancient Mesopotamia since time immemorial. Last night in Qaraqosh, Kramles, Talkief, Bartalla and other central areas, the Islamic Caliphate offensive crushed all resistance from the Peshmerga Kurds and the regular army serving the Kurdistan Regional Government.

With the world’s attention focused on Gaza, Islamist militants in Iraq can perpetrate their crimes without fear of facing justice, the Anglican vicar of Baghdad has said.

Andrew White, an Anglican canon at St. George’s church in Baghdad, who has served in the war-torn country for ten years, said more than 1,500 people in Iraq had been executed by Islamic State extremists.

“The Islamic State simply said we can do anything now the world is just looking at Gaza,” White said in a newsletter.

A week ago, the Islamic State (IS) released a video of their members beheading some 50 young men in Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, and assassinating hundreds of others in cities in Syria and Iraq. These are the most brutal images that a person can witness. IS does not ask about religion when they attack, they slaughter Muslims too. But if you happen to be a non-Muslim, the chance of your survival under their rule diminishes greatly.

Since capturing the country's second largest city of Mosul in early June, the Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS, has ordered Christians to convert to Islam, pay taxes levied on non-Muslims, or die. The extremist Sunni group is also persecuting and murdering Turkmen and Shabaks, both Muslim religious minorities.

“Religious freedom is human freedom,” stated US Secretary of State John Kerry recently when he presented the International Religious Freedom Report for 2013.

We have a long journey ahead to achieve this freedom, he added, given that 75% of the world’s population lives in countries that do not respect it.

Kerry emphasized that with the report the United States is “not arrogantly telling people what to believe.”

“People also said John XXIII’s message to the Americans and Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was futile. But history proved otherwise.” Bishop Ambrogio Spreafico – who is President of the Italian Episcopal Conference’s Commission for Cooperation between Churches and of the “Missio” foundation, a spiritual assistant of the Community of Sant’Egidio and a member of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints – talks to Vatican Insider about the prospects and objectives that are pushing Vatican diplomacy to strive to help end to hostilities in Gaza through appeasement.

If there is hell on Earth, it is found these days in the Middle East where aggression and violence are rampant. Political and religious extremism are leading to fear, disempowerment, dispossession, trauma, injury, and death, in addition to the destruction of property and infrastructure. Major areas of the Gaza Strip, Iraq, and Syria are up in flames and in ruins.

Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga has issued an appeal for an end to hostilities and the lifting of the Gaza blockade. “A permanent ceasefire, is just the first step on the road to a just peace based on inclusive negotiations across the region,” said the President of Caritas Internationalis and coordinator of the Council of Cardinals that is assisting Pope Francis in Church government in a document outlining the situation in Gaza, Vatican Radio reports. The Honduran cardinal is calling for a laying down of arms, recalling that the majority of victims are innocent people.

On his forthcoming trip to the Albanian capital, Tirana, on Sunday 21 September, Pope Francis will meet with State and religious leaders, the local clergy and some children who are being cared for in various charity organisations. The Holy See Press Office has published the full schedule of the Pope’s one-day visit, during which he will give six speeches.

Since early July, almost two million Palestinians in Gaza and people in Israel have been caught up in a devastating war. People have no safe place to hide when the bombs rain down on the densely-populated, small stretch land that is Gaza. They see their children slaughtered, their neighbourhoods razed to the ground and all hopes for a future of peace torn to shreds.

The battlefield is neighbourhoods full of children, women and men. It contains hospitals over-burdened with the injured and dead and schools which are being bombed even if they are meant to offer refuge.