DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - In small but steady numbers, Iraqi Christians are moving to Syria to escape the threats and violence of Islamic extremists, say Iraqi Christian exiles.

"The religious and ethnic pressure on us is tremendous," said Shamasha Muayad Shamoun Georges, 45, a deacon of the Chaldean Solaqa Church in Baghdad, who fled to Syria two weeks ago with his wife and five children.

Georges said the pressure comes from "Muslim extremists," not from the interim Iraqi government, which has a Christian as minister of immigration and refugees.

During Sunday evening mass, suspected Islamic militants set off a series of explosions at five churches in Baghdad and the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, killing at least seven people and wounding dozens. It was the first major assault on Iraq's Christian minority since the Iraqi war began last year.

Christians number about 750,000 people among Iraq's total population of about 25 million. They include the Chaldean-Assyrians, the majority sect, Armenians - one of whose churches was bombed on Sunday, Syrian Catholics and Syrian Orthodox.

Islamic militants have told Christian owners of liquor stores to close down their businesses, and they have threatened Christians who run beauty salons and shops selling fashionable clothes. Georges said he does not expect such pressure to end soon.

Another Iraqi Christian in Syria, Jacqueline Isho, said that when Christians complain to the authorities in Iraq, they are "always ignored." "Some police sympathize with, or support, those Islamists and gangs," Isho said.

Scores of Iraqi Christian families move to Syria and Jordan every day, according toEmanuel Khoshaba, a representative of the Iraqi Assyrian Democratic Movement in Syria.

Khoshaba said there are now 10,000 Iraqi Christians in Syria, and 90 per cent of them arrived after the Iraqi war began in March last year. Such figures could not be confirmed with government officials as Syrian and Jordanian immigration forms do not ask a person's religion.

"I have run away because gangs kept on threatening me," said Adeeb Goga Matti, 48, who belongs to a wealthy Chaldean-Assyrian family in Baghdad.

He said his 10-year-old nephew, Patrous Yakou, was kidnapped at the end of 2003 and released only after his family paid a ransom of US$15,000. After the kidnapping, Matti stopped sending his four children to school.

"Chaldean-Assyrians are the easiest targets for gangsters because they don't belong to a tribal system like other Iraqis," Matti stressed. Muslim Iraqis tend to belong to clans who rally round and protect their members.

Matti is in Damascus applying for a visa to Australia. Iraqi Christians in Syria are also applying to emigrate to Canada, the United States and other Western countries.

Albert Sargon, 24, and his wife, Suhat, 26, left Iraq last month. "I ran away from threatening messages sent by Islamists because I was working as a cook for Americans," Sargon said.

He and his wife do not plan to return!