A full-blown war against the Islamic State (ISIS) fighters is the only way to keep radical Islamists from destroying Christianity in Iraq, according to an archbishop in the country's Kurdish-controlled north.
"For me, Daesh [another name for ISIS] is a cancer," Archbishop Bashar Warda in Erbil tells "60 Minutes" in an excerpt of his interview released Thursday in advance of the Sunday CBS program.
"So sometimes you take some hard measures, unfortunate measures, to deal and treat this cancer."
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The Chaldean Catholic prelate says the situation for thousands of Iraqi Christians forced to flee their homes is dire.
He tells "60 Minutes" that about 60,000 Christian refugees have fled Mosul and the surrounding villages on the Nineveh Plains in the wake of ISIS' insurgence last summer.
In all, it's believed 200,000 Christians have been displaced by ISIS, "60 Minutes" reports.
Asked if the military should crush ISIS, the prelate replies: "Please God."
"60 Minutes" also interviews an Iraqi refugee who, along with his entire family, chose to convert to Islam rather than be killed.
About a month later, however, ISIS militants advised him 10-year-old girls, like his daughter, should be married.
"As soon as they left, my wife and I shut the door," the man tells "60 Minutes."
"We looked at each other and she started to cry — and pray."
The family escaped to Erbil, declaring at each ISIS checkpoint that they were Muslims, he tells "60 Minutes."
Erbil, in Iraq's Kurdish-controlled North, the capital of what's referred to as Kurdistan, offers a sanctuary for many fleeing Christians, "60 Minutes" notes.
"We don't know exactly, but we are expecting the worse," Father Yusuuf Ibrahim, one of the last monks in a 1,600-year-old monastery in the ISIS-controlled part of Iraq, tells "60 Minutes."
Correspondent Lara Logan reports "for the first time in nearly 2,000 years, it is believed that the city of Mosul has no Christians left in it."
Nicodemus Sharaf, archbishop of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Mosul, tells "60 Minutes" he was unable to save hundreds of ancient texts when he fled from ISIS.
"I think they burn all the books," he says. "And we have books from the first century of the Christianity, They take everything from us, but they cannot take the God from our hearts, they cannot."
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