Christians are being severely persecuted in Iraq. German churches are now urging the government to be generous in granting them asylum -- and have encountered broad support.

The seven orphaned Jalal children with their grandparents in the German city of Essen.
The peaceful, idyllic scenery outside their window is completely foreign to them. The house in the western German city of Essen, where they had arrived the previous Wednesday, faces a landscape of small gardens in full bloom. Fascinated, the seven children in the Jalal family are constantly looking out the window. They have come from Mosul in Iraq to Germany's Ruhr region, where their grandparents, who have already been living here for four years, have taken them in.

Armed Sunnis forced their way into the Jalal family's house last August. Screaming "damned Christians," they beat the children, the eldest of them only 14. The attackers spat at pictures of the Virgin Mary on the wall and then shot the mother to death in front of her children. Her husband had been kidnapped a few days earlier on the way to work and disappeared without a trace.

The escape from Iraq took the children to Germany by way of Damascus. Staff members at the German embassy in the Syrian capital were so touched by their story that they did everything within their power, even involving senior members of the German Foreign Ministry, to help the children.

source: Der Spiegel