UN: If confirmed, chemical attacks in Mosul a war crime

Victims of a possible IS chemical attack civilians Ekhlas Meshal, 30, holds her injured two-month old child Rami, as she sits next to her injured two-year old daughter Dima, receive treatment in a hospital in Irbil, Iraq, Saturday, March 4, 2017. A doctor in western Irbil said on Saturday that 10 people with injuries caused by chemicals have been admitted to his hospital over the last two days.

U.S. troops join displaced Iraqi Christians for Christmas Eve Mass

BARTELLA, Iraq — For the 300 Christians who braved rain and wind to attend Christmas’s Eve Mass in their hometown, the ceremony evoked both holiday cheer and grim reminders of the war raging around their northern Iraqi town, and the distant prospect of moving back home. Displaced when the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria seized their town, Bartella, in August 2014, the Christians were bused into town from Irbil, capital of the self-ruled Kurdish region where they have lived for more than two years, to attend the lunchtime service in the Assyrian Orthodox church of Mart Shmoni.