Dozens of faithful celebrated mass Saturday at a Mosul church in northern Iraq for the first time since it was restored after its ransacking by Islamic State jihadists.

IS swept into Mosul and proclaimed it their "capital" in 2014, in an onslaught that forced hundreds of thousands of Christians in the northern Nineveh province to flee, some to Iraq's nearby Kurdistan region.

The Iraqi army drove out the jihadists three years later after months of gruelling street fighting that devastated the city.

The Mar Tuma Syriac Catholic church, which dates back to the 19th century, was used by the jihadists as a prison or a court.

Restoration work is ongoing and its marble floor has been dismantled to be completely redone.

In September 2021, a new bell was inaugurated at the church during a ceremony attended by dozens of worshippers.

The 285-kilogramme (nearly 630-pound) bell cast in Lebanon rang out on Saturday to cries of joy before the mass got underway, an AFP correspondent said.

The service began with worshippers who packed the church chanting hymns as an organist played.

"This is the most beautiful church in Iraq," said Father Pios Affas, 82, the delighted parish priest.

Affas also paid tribute to those behind the restoration work which, he said, had "brought the church back to its past glory, like the way it was 160 years ago".

Inside the church, ochre and grey marble shone in the nave, where the altar and colonnaded arches were restored and new stained glass installed.

Jihadists had destroyed all Christian symbols, including the holy cross, and parts of the church were damaged by fire and shelling.

Artisans worked diligently to "clean the scorched marble" and restore it, Fraternity in Iraq, a French NGO that aids religious minorities, which helped fund the restoration work said earlier this year.

Outbuildings and rooms on the first floor, where windows have been broken and IS graffiti can be seen, are still due to be repaired.

Mosul and the surrounding plains of Nineveh were once home to one of the region's oldest Christian communities.

Iraq's Christian population has shrunk to fewer than 400,000 from around 1.5 million before the US-led invasion of 2003 that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.

Nineveh province was left in ruins after three years of jihadist occupation which ended in 2017 when Iraqi forces backed by US-led coalition air strikes pushed them out.

Several monasteries and churches are being renovated but reconstruction is slow, and the Christian population that has fled has not returned.

Pope Francis made a historic visit to the region last year.

Iraq seizes more than 6 million captagon pills in drug bust
Baghdad (AFP) April 30, 2022 - Iraqi security forces said Saturday they had broken up a drug trafficking ring and seized more than six million pills of the amphetamine-type stimulant captagon, making several arrests.

Iraq's northwestern neighbour Syria is the Middle East's main captagon producer, and its southern neighbour Saudi Arabia the main consumer.

Iraqi forces seized "around 6.2 million pills" from a warehouse in the southwest of the capital, the national security agency said in a statement, adding that the drugs were set for distribution "in areas of Baghdad and other provinces".

Three Iraqis and four suspects from other Arab countries were arrested in connection with the trafficking network, it added.

The statement said security forces broke up a second drug ring after an Arab national was arrested "in possession of six kilos (13 pounds) of hashish", while two accomplices were also detained.

All 10 accused "admitted to links with international drug trafficking networks", it said.

Drug trafficking convictions can be punishable by the death penalty in Iraq.

Trade in captagon in the Middle East grew exponentially in 2021 to top $5 billion, posing an increasing health and security risk to the region, a report said earlier this month.

Captagon was the trade name of a drug initially patented in Germany in the early 1960s that contained an amphetamine-type stimulant called fenethylline used to treat attention deficit and narcolepsy among other conditions.

It was later banned and became an illicit drug almost exclusively produced and consumed in the Middle East.

Captagon is now a brand name, with its trademark logo sporting two interlocked "Cs", or crescents, embossed on each tablet, for a drug that often contains little or no fenethylline and is close to what is known in other countries as "speed".

The sale and use of drugs in Iraq has soared in recent years. Security forces have stepped up operations and make almost daily announcements of seizures or arrests.

In the first three months of this year, Iraqi security forces detained 18 suspected drug traffickers in the largely desert province of Anbar, which shares a long border with Syria, according to an official source.

More than three million captagon pills were seized in the same period.

A poem to Arab beauty: the fashion designs of Hana Sadiq
Amman (AFP) April 29, 2022 - With verses from love poems and flowing calligraphy, Jordan-based fashion designer Hana Sadiq stitches a testament to the beauty of Arab women.

In a career spanning decades, Iraqi-born Sadiq has shown her creations worldwide and dressed the stars, but she remains rooted in the traditions of her homeland.

The artistic handwriting of Arabic script dominates her embroidered modern designs, with poetry or letters scattered in bright colours.

She uses various calligraphic styles, from the elaborate Diwani to the curving Thuluth, and features on some of her outfits the lines of renowned Arab poets including Mahmoud Darwish and Nizar Qabbani.

"Arabic calligraphy is the most beautiful," says Sadiq, 72, showing off her love of jewellery with strings of beads around her neck, dangling earrings, and unusual stone rings.

At her home workshop in downtown Amman, Sadiq notes that the earliest writing was born several millennia before Christ in what is now Iraq, arguing that it was a place "without which all the other civilisations would not have existed".

Sadiq has split her time between Amman and Paris since 1982, having both French and Jordanian nationality as well as Iraqi citizenship.

- 'How beautiful she is' -

She has exhibited from Europe to the United States as well as the Middle East, returning home with an extensive collection of antique silver ornaments, along with thousands of pieces of Arab textiles and costumes.

Her kaftans, traditional robes, feature bright and stunning colours. They reflect the influence of her grandmother who wore a traditional Iraqi "Hashemite dress" and walked "elegantly like a peacock".

The folk outfit is made of very thin fabric with wide sleeves and transparent sides, decorated with beautiful floral ornaments, golden or silver, on a black base. It was the favourite of Iraqi women in the 1950s and 60s.

Sadiq traces her interest in fashion to her childhood, when she would visit her grandfather's textile shop in Baghdad.

She went on to design for celebrities and royals, including Jordan's Queen Rania and Queen Noor. But whoever the client, her work has been guided by pride in the Arab woman's femininity.

Unlike more revealing Western fashion, her designs envelope the woman's body, "but it shows high femininity," says Sadiq, who is also the author of a book, "Arab Costumes and Jewelry, a Legacy without Borders".

She argues that Western clothes are not the best fit for the bodies of Arab women but have spread to the region anyway. "Unfortunately this is the result of globalisation," she says.

"What matters to me, in all my work, is that the woman remains female and that a man is attracted to her as a female," she adds. "Which means when a woman passes in front of him, he must notice and see how beautiful she is."

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Iraqi Christians celebrate first Easter 'Holy Fire'
Bashiqa, Iraq (AFP) April 24, 2022
With joyous ululations, thousands of Iraqis have celebrated for the first time the arrival of the "Holy Fire" brought from Christianity's holiest site in Jerusalem to mark Orthodox Easter. With chanting and prayers, excited crowds gathered Saturday night to greet the flame's arrival at the Syriac Christian Orthodox Mar Matta monastery of Saint Matthew, about 28 kilometres (17 miles) from the war-ravaged city of Mosul in northern Iraq. "It is a message of peace and love for all... a message of re ... read more