With Unesco and its initiative "Reviving the spirit of Mosul", several projects are underway to rehabilitate churches, the al-Nouri mosque and its 850-year-old leaning minaret, as well as around a hundred houses in the Old city.

On the occasion of her first visit to Iraq, the director general of Unesco Audrey Azoulay went to Mosul on Tuesday, where she met engineers on the sites to follow the progress of the work, noted a correspondent of the AFP.

At the Notre-Dame de l'Heure convent, on the roof of the church rebuilt with "magnificent stone, gilded a bit like bread" as the Dominican father Olivier Poquillon raves, the audience heard the three bells freshly landed from France and mounted in their campanile.

"It's a symbol of a return to peace, a link with history, but also a symbol of hope for the future," said Ms. Azoulay, thanking the ALIPH foundation and the United Arab Emirates for funding the restorations in Mosul.

The original bells also came from France, offered in the 19th century by Empress Eugénie.

The three news, made in bronze, which bear the names of the three archangels, Gabriel, Michel and Raphaël and weigh from 110 to 270 kg, were melted in Villedieu-les-Poêles, in Normandy.

The same foundry that prepares the bells of Notre-Dame de Paris, underlined Ms. Azoulay.

Unesco Director General Audrey Azoulay visiting Mosul, where with the help of Unesco three bells from Normandy were installed in the church of the Convent of Notre-Dame de l'Heure, on March 7, 2023. © Zaid AL-OBEIDI / AFP

"Coexistence"

First school for girls in Iraq, first school for teachers, the convent of Notre-Dame de L'Heure was built by Dominican friars in the middle of the 19th century.

"We are in a place of religion, culture, coexistence, education, so it is really a very symbolic place whose rehabilitation we wanted to support", greeted Ms. Azoulay.

Like the entire city of Mosul, the site suffered from the abuses of the IS, which had made this city its "capital" in Iraq in 2014, before the authorities drove out the jihadists and proclaimed their victory in 2017.

The arrival of IS had prompted tens of thousands of Christians to flee Mosul and the province of Nineveh, once high places of Christianity.

With more than 1.5 million people in 2003 before the American invasion, the country's Christian community has shrunk to some 400,000 souls, many having fled the violence that bloodied the country.

"We see life coming back to the neighborhood," confided Father Olivier Poquillon at the end of February.

As work continues in the church, he hopes the bells will regain "a dialogue function".

"Alternately, we hear in the Old City (...) both the call to prayer of the muezzin and the call to prayer of the bells".

© 2023 AFP