ANWAKA, Iraq (LifeSiteNews) — The Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil in Iraq has suffered a drone strike on an apartment complex where several Christian families live.
On March 4 at 8 p.m. local time, a drone strike damaged the building in Ankawa, a suburb of Erbil in Iraq, the archdiocese said.
No one was killed or injured in the attack. “Fortunately, the building had been largely evacuated several days earlier due to its proximity to the Erbil International Airport,” the archdiocese said in a statement. The building was home to workers for the archdiocese and young Christian families who were displaced by an earlier attack in the region.
ACI MENA posted a video of the attack, writing that a “missile and a drone fell in two separate instances” during the evening.
2 downed drones hit our Chaldean convent & apartment building in our Christian quarter of Anakwa. The latter was funded by Knights of Columbus to house the displaced by ISIS. 12 years later more displacement/collateral damage. The cycle of violence becomes shorter & shorter. pic.twitter.com/OC9WIvdgYv
— bishopwarda (@bishopwarda) March 4, 2026
The building was funded by the Knights of Columbus as a center for Christian refugees displaced during the war from 2014 to 2018. A nearby convent of the Chaldean Daughters of Mary Immaculate was also damaged by the attack.
“We are now in a time once again where we pray for the solidarity and support from our brothers and sisters around the world, that these times of violence and war will come to an end, and that our suffering people may yet have a chance to return to lives of peace and dignity,” Erbil Archbishop Bashar Warda said in a statement.
The archdiocese called on Christians worldwide “to remember and pray for the many marginalized people in Iraq, including the small and still threatened Christian minority struggling to remain in their native land.”
Erbil was shaken by several powerful explosions on Wednesday night after air defense systems had intercepted multiple drones over the city, sending debris raining down on residential areas, leaving at least one person injured, according to local Kurdish news outlet 964 media.
The Iraqi pro-Iran Islamic militant organization Saraya Awliya al-Dam (Guardians of Blood) claimed responsibility for the attack. The group said it launched launched “a swarm of drones” targeting “a base of the American occupation at Erbil airport” and added the operation was carried out “in fulfillment of our religious duty and in retribution for the blood of the martyred leader Ali al-Husseini Khamenei, and in response to the aggression that led to the martyrdom of three young Iraqi resistance fighters.”
Erbil has been targeted by more than 100 drones and missiles since the start of the Iran war on February 28, with Iran and its allied Iraqi militias claiming responsibility for many of the attacks.
