HOPE was fading last night for the leadership team of the main Anglican church in Iraq, who are presumed to have been killed while returning from a conference in Jordan.

The team of five Iraqi-born Anglicans, including the lay pastor of St George’s Church and his deputy, should have returned two weeks ago but were apparently attacked en route.

Canon Andrew White, of the Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East, who is the clergyman in charge of the church, said: “There is no news, and no news is bad news. The reality is that, after two weeks, it is going to be very strange to get any news. The awful thing is that in these situations we often just never hear anything at all.”

Had they been kidnapped, there would have been a ransom demand by now, he said.

“They are almost certainly dead,” the Most Rev Clive Handford, president bishop of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, said. “They had just entered some of the most dangerous country in Iraq where there are an enormous number of robberies. People will steal cars, money, anything of value, and sometimes people get killed.”

The missing Anglicans are Maher Dakel, the lay pastor; his wife Mona, who leads the women’s section of the church; their son Yeheya, the church’s pianist and music director; Firas Raad, the deputy lay pastor; and their driver, whose name has not been disclosed.

Canon White last heard news of the five on September 13, when he was told that they had been attacked the previous day on the notoriously dangerous road between Ramadi and Fallujah.

He said that other members of the church believed that they had been taken to hospital by American troops, which was one reason they had not released the news for so long; but repeated checks with US forces had drawn a blank.

Canon White did not think they were targeted because they were Anglicans. “The fact is that attacks on people on that road happen all the time, particularly on people who appear to be richer or middle-class,” he said.

Canon White, until recently the Archbishop of Canterbury's representative to the Middle East, helped to reopen St George’s in Baghdad after the Iraqi war in 2003, but was forced to withdraw by the escalating violence. Mr Dakel was appointed to take the services instead.

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