The wife of Saad Polus Qiryaqoz, a 56-year-old Christian refugee from the town of Bartella in northern Iraq's Nineveh plain, prepares Christmas cookies at their new home in Jordan's capital Amman. Up until 2014, when the Islamic State group swept the Nineveh Plain in northern Iraq, Christians had pulled out the stops over Christmas with celebrations lasting a whole month. More than 66,000 Iraqis live in Jordan, forced out in waves by conflict, starting with the 1990 first Gulf War, the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and the 2014 emergence of IS. Of those, between 12,000 and 18,000 are Christians, according to Wael Suleiman, who heads the Catholic charity Caritas in Jordan.
AFP