In an interview April 4 with Vatican News, the cardinal said that despite the war, up to this point Christians in Syria celebrated Holy Week and Easter every year, "even under the risk of bombs and mortar attacks."

Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. human rights chief, called on Syria and its allies to permit safe humanitarian corridors to be set up in the conflict areas.

"The wounds of the Islamic State have not been healed yet, together with the ongoing violence, poverty, unemployment and poor services that have pushed thousands of people, especially youth, to demonstrate peacefully, demanding the right to live with dignity and freedom in a stable, secure and strong independent homeland," Cardinal Louis Sako, patriarch of Chaldean Catholics, said of anti-government protests.

Amid deadly protests in Iraq, a people's uprising in Lebanon and continued suffering in Syria, Catholic leaders of the Middle East called upon officials of their homelands to "ensure safety, peace and tranquility and stability for their citizens."

Armed groups affiliated with ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, celebrating erroneously in a statement the killing of “two priests.”

This is only the latest wave of Syrian refugees and internally displaced people from Iraq to seek safety in Iraqi-Kurdistan, which already hosts 38 camps. So far 12,000 Syrian civilians have taken refuge across the border.