Kirkuk, Iraq (DPA) -- Members of the Christian minority in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk canceled public Christmas celebrations this year in part because of Switzerland's ban on minarets, a priest said Friday. "For the first time, Christians in Kirkuk are canceling their holiday celebrations in sadness and pain," Father Haitham Saliywa, a priest at one of Kirkuk's largest churches, told the German Press Agency dpa.

"We have told our loved ones that the reason for cancellation is our sadness for the victims of the explosions in Mosul and Baghdad, and our solidarity with Muslims over the issue of the Swiss government's ban on minarets," he said.

In November, 57 per cent of Swiss voters and 22 out of 26 cantons voted in favour of a referendum seeking to ban the construction of minarets, the towers rising above mosques.

But Saliywa said the cancellation of public observance of Christmas also followed attacks and threats against members of the city's Christian community, amid rising tensions in the city.

Kirkuk and the surrounding countryside are home to a patchwork of religious and ethnic groups. Many Kurds hope to make it the future capital of an independent state, but Arab and Turkmen politicians view it as an integral part of Iraq.

Controversy over voting in the city delayed for months passage of a law to cover the 2010 parliamentary elections.

The issue of voting in the city and surrounding Tamim province has proved so thorny that both were left out of previous votes since the 2003 US-led invasion of the country.

As the March polls approach, sectarian sentiment is running high, often with deadly effect. Christian community leaders say members of the religious minority have often borne the brunt.

"Every holiday, Christians are targeted in an attempt to get us to leave our homes and our cities," Emad Hanna, head of the Assyrian Movement in Kirkuk, an organisation that advocates for the interests of Iraqi Assyrian Christians, told dpa.

Edward Awrha, the province's deputy governor and a Christian, says the city and surrounding villages are home to roughly 10,000 Christian Iraqis, but that at least 10 families had fled in the past three months following a series of abductions.

In November, a Christian who works for an oil company in Kirkuk was abducted. Earlier, police discovered the body of a Christian businessman in al-Hai al-Askari neighbourhood, a few days after his abduction.