Crazy footage from yesterday in the Nineveh Governorate of Northern Iraq, close to the Kurdish-majority city of Erbil, showing an American Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS), a copycat of the Iranian Shahed-136, striking a building utilized by Iraq’s Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).

Before the Assyrian Christian Genocide of 1915 an Assyrian Christian woman from Tkhuma, Hakkari (present-day Turkey)—one of the last generations to live freely in her ancestral homeland. Between 1914 and 1924, more than 70% of the Assyrian Christians of Hakkari were systematically killed. The survivors were forced into exile, fleeing to the Nineveh Plains, Urmia, and beyond—ending an Assyrian presence in Hakkari that had endured for thousands of years. But Hakkari was only one part of a much larger tragedy. Across the Ottoman Empire—in Mosul, Urmia, Siirt, Diyarbakir, Adana, Mardin, Tur Abdin and Beirut—entire regions were devastated Eyewitnesses spoke of rivers running red and wells filled with bodies. Villages were burned. Churches were desecrated. In the spring of 1915, a storm of violence swept across the empire. This was not random. This was not temporary. This was systematic destruction. The Christian Assyrians, Armenians, Greeks, and Maronites—ancient peoples rooted in faith, language, and identity—were targeted for annihilation. For the Assyrians, this catastrophe is remembered as Seyfo/Sayfo—the Year of the Sword. Families like the woman in this photograph were torn apart: • Fathers executed • Mothers violated • Children taken, orphaned, or left to die along endless death marches. Entire communities vanished. Historians estimate that over 3.5 million Assyrians, Armenians, Greeks, and Maronites were killed. Today, more than a century later… The memory lives on. The pain remains. The voices still echo. We remember.