巴格达的基督徒希望逃离

Having maintained continuous communities for almost 2,000 years, Christians in northern Iraq are now fleeing en-mass after being given a choice to pay protection money, convert, run, or be killed. Christians in the capital are now also wondering if they too should leave before it's too late.

A Christian church service in Baghdad. The congregation prays for the safety of Christians in Mosul, which since June has been under the control of Sunni Muslim insurgents.

The capture of the north has sparked an exodus of Christians who fear the same some of persecution that led to thousands of deaths in 2006.

A decade ago there were one million Christians in Iraq. Today there are about four hundred thousand.

So far the Sunni group known as the Islamic State, or IS, has given Christians four options. The first is to pay protection money.

"If they don’t pay they must leave their home and their furniture. Only by their clothes they must depart, or the third chance is become Muslims," Prof. Aziz Jaber with Baghdad’s Mustansiriyah University said.

Death is the forth option. Human rights groups warn the killings have already begun. It’s not just cities like Mosul and Nineveh from which Iraqi Christians are fleeing. In this Christian Baghdad barbershop the talk is of what the future might bring and the friends they know who have already decided to pack their bags.

"Well most of them are frightened of the situation. Most of them are thinking of migration. As I see there’s no hope in the near future. There’s no peace in the near future," A Iraqi christian Kifah Salim said.

In Baghdad there is time to contemplate, but northern Iraq is already experiencing the biggest mass flight of Christians witnessed by any country in almost one hundred years.