Estimates of the number of Christians in Iraq in 2003 vary from 800,000 to 1.5 million. But hundreds of thousands have fled since the invasion. Seven of the 14 churches in Baghdad have closed, and two-thirds of the city's 500,000 Christians are gone.
While Saddam Hussein, a secularist, had protected religious minorities, Muslim vigilantes -- Shia, Sunni and Kurd, as well as al-Qaida -- have attacked the Christians who have endured kidnappings, pillage, rapes, beheadings and assassinations.