France has said it is ready to welcome Christians fleeing the area of Iraq controlled by Islamic State group's fighters, saying it is ‘outraged’ by their persecution. Islamic State fighters seized large swathes of northern Iraq last month, prompting hundreds of Christian families in Mosul to flee a city which has hosted the faith since its earliest years. ‘France is outraged by these abuses that it condemns with the utmost firmness,’ Laurent Fabius, France's foreign minister, and Bernard Cazeneuve, the interior minister, said in a joint statement on Monday. ‘The ultimatum given to these communities in Mosul by ISIL is the latest tragic example of the terrible threat that jihadist groups in Iraq, but also in Syria and elsewhere, pose to these populations that are historically an integral part of this region,’ they added, referring to the Islamic State's former name of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.