Dozens of Christians and Muslims have been gathering together in Baghdad to protest at the threatened demolition of a Chaldean church.

The Chaldean Catholic Church of Divine Wisdom, in the district of Adhamiya, has been marked for demolition by the authorities, together with some surrounding buildings, as part of a redevelopment programme in the city which suffered a great deal of damage during and after the 2003 war.

But local residents say the project is driven by commercial and political forces, and does not take into account the significance of the church for the community.

Campaigners say the church has been a symbol of the coexistence between the different faiths in Iraq.

The church of the Divine Wisdom was built in 1929 by British architect James Mollison Wilson during the British Mandate on Mesopotamia, and is located on the border of two inhabited urban areas respectively by Shiites and Sunnis.