Speaking on the CBS 60 Minutes programme, Canon Andrew White, an English Anglican priest based in the Iraqi capital, said that things were worse there now than ever they had been.

"There's no comparison between Iraq now and [under Saddam]," Canon Andrew White, vicar of St George’s, Baghdad, said an interview to be broadcast tomorrow [Sunday] on CBS. "Things are the most difficult they have ever been for Christians, probably ever in history," he added.

He confirmed recent reports that almost all of the country’s Christian population have either fled, been killed, or been the targets of assassination or kidnap. And 60 Minutes claims that some previously strongly Christian areas are now empty of believers.

White says in the programme: "Here in this church [St George’s], all of my leadership were originally taken and killed," he said. "This is one of the problems. I regularly do funerals here, but it's not easy to get the bodies."

As a result of the killings, White conducts what have been called "underground" services for what remains of his congregation, including the infirm, elderly and others who have been unable to flee Baghdad.

He said that the sectarian killings in Iraq are an example of religion "gone wrong."

He said, "When religion goes wrong, it kills others."