Iraq’s Christians, today less than 3 percent of the country's population, have faced serious violence in recent months, particularly in Baghdad. The Iraqi government urged Christians not to flee after the recent spate of attacks, but more vowed to leave – following in the footsteps of hundreds of thousands who fled the country's sectarian conflict.
According to a Monitor report, there were between 800,000 and 1.4 million Christians in Iraq at the beginning of the US invasion in 2003 (about 5 percent of the population) and only 500,000 to 600,000 remained in January 2010. While many more Muslims fled the country, a disproportionate number of the refugees were Christian.
