On the second day of her visit to Erbil on Tuesday, First Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign and European Affairs Minister Vesna Pusić visited the Ankawa refugee camp, which provides shelter to Christians, as well as the Church of St Elias and St Joseph, where she met with Bishop Bashar Warda.
Bishop Warda informed Pusić about the situation with Christian refugees. “We have lost 6,000 families, who have left for Jordan, Syria and elsewhere and are very unlikely to return to Iraq. It's a great loss for such a small minority community,” he said. The bishop noted that the Christians did not experience such a terrible fate as the Yazidis. “The dignity of these people is our priority, so it was important to help and ensure that they can take care of themselves. That's why we are renting apartments so that families can move out of the camps as soon as possible,” he added. Warda said that the entire Christian community of 125,000 from Mosul had arrived in Kurdistan.
Pusić and Warda also discussed primary healthcare and education, given a large number of children among the refugees.