Demonstrators marched from Yonge and Front Streets to City Hall, holding signs calling for an end to the violence and chanting prayers in Aramaic, Arabic and Assyrian.

Organizer Senan Poules said the goal of the demonstration was to get the media to pay attention to the crisis facing Christians in Iraq.

"We need the media to pay attention to us," said Poules, a parishioner at St. Joseph Syriac Catholic Church in Mississauga, Ont. "And Christians keep dying day after day."

Nawar Naiel, an Iraqi Orthodox Christian at the demonstration, said the Arabic community in Canada wanted to show its support.

"But we're devastated," said Naiel. "We know people have family in Iraq. We're trying to help the best we can. Trying to show the world we care."

Amir Harrak, a deacon at St. Joseph Syriac Catholic Church and a professor at the University of Toronto, said one of the reasons he wanted to attend was to raise awareness as many of his Canadian friends and colleagues still haven’t heard about the attacks.

"This massacre is offering all indications that there is an ethnic religious cleansing in Iraq,” he said. “There is a devilish plan to empty Iraq of its Christian inhabitants despite the fact that the Iraqi Christians are one of the oldest Christian communities in the world."

Rob Oliphant, a Liberal MP and United Church of Canada minister, was also in attendance.

"The most recent incidents are showing the vacuum that exists in Iraq is a very dangerous situation for Christians and the numbers are shrinking," said Oliphant. "That they become refugees in another country is a bad thing but to be killed is something that Canada has to stand up for."

On Nov. 11, a prayer vigil for Christians in the Middle East, led by Archbishop Thomas Collins and other faith leaders, was to be held at St. Michael’s Cathedral to remember those who perished.