ISIS turns historic church into military base

Iraqi Christians who are now returning to the village of Karamles have found that their church has been turned into a military base by Islamic State militants.

"They are the grandsons of Satan," said Basma al-Saoor after she saw the damage done to Santa Barbara church.

The militants have piled up rubble and soil inside the chapel and dug a network of tunnels under the historic building, the BBC reported.

A few people volunteered to clean up the mess under the supervision of Father Paul Thabet. Before the town was captured by ISIS, he used to hold regular services at Saint Addai church, which is the main church in the village.

The Saint Addai church was also left in ruins by the militant group. The statues were decapitated, the priest's tomb was split open and the altar was riddled with bullets.

Thabet told the BBC that true forgiveness can only come after the perpetrators are brought to justice. He has some suspicions that some Sunni Muslims supported or joined ISIS and he is concerned that there are still gunmen hiding among the residents of the village.

The churches at Karamles were not the only ones destroyed by the terror group. The Christian militia known as the Babylon Brigades discovered that ISIS has burnt the sacred texts and destroyed the statues at the Mar Behnam monastery, a 14th-century monastery located near Mosul.

The monastery had been converted into a headquarters for the Hisba, the morality police that enforces the strict Islamic rules as interpreted by ISIS, according to a report from Reuters.

The jihadists also tried to remove any mention of Behnam, the son of the Assyrian king who built the monastery, according to popular legend. Some of the walls have been covered with ISIS graffiti.

"Their fundamental goal was to destroy Christian history and civilization in the Nineveh plains," said Duraid Elias, the commander of the militia.

In the ancient city of Nimrud, it was discovered that ISIS has destroyed a 2,900-year-old ziggurat pyramid.

Afram Yakoub, a spokesperson for the Assyrian Confederation, decried the destruction of the site as "a failure for the world community which hasn't been able to protect world heritage sites in war zones."

"The Assyrian nation has survived countless attacks, massacres and genocides throughout history, this recent destruction saddens us but it also makes us more determined to fight for our survival as a nation," he told Christian Today.