Iraqi Christians' flee violence, fear end of long history

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* Conflict drives out Iraq's few remaining Christians * Christians even leave safer Kurdish region * Churches closed in Mosul under Islamist caliphate By Robin Emmott BRUSSELS, July 9 (Reuters) - The violence in Iraq is hastening the end of nearly 2,000 years of Christianity there as the few remaining faithful flee Islamic State militants, archbishops from Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk said on Wednesday. War and sectarian conflict have shrunk Iraq's Christian population to about 400,000 from 1.5 million before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, and **w even those who stayed are leaving for Turkey, Leba**n and western Europe, the prelates said on a visit to Brussels seeking European Union help to protect their flocks. The three - Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako, Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Mosul Yohanna Petros Mouche and Kirkuk's Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Youssif Mirkis - are all Eastern Catholics whose churches have their own traditional liturgy but are loyal to the pope in Rome.

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