The Greek Orthodox Church’s Archbishop of Aleppo Boulos Yazigi and Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Aleppo Yuhanna Ibrahim were abducted on Monday in Syria’s Aleppo.

The National News Agency reported that a group of gunmen stopped the car carrying the two Christian hierarchs, killed the driver and kidnapped the two religious leaders.

Ibrahim had picked up Yazigi from a town near the Turkish border, and when they reached the entrance to Aleppo, they were intercepted by the armed men.

Syria has been gripped by a violent uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad since March 2011, and has so far claimed the lives of over 70,000 people.

04/23/2013 - NOW

04/12/12

Syria, Latakia: The Regime’s Crimes

Against Christians

Criminality has no religion, and the criminality of the Syrian regime does not differentiate between Muslims or Christians . The Syrian regime forces shelled mosques as they bombed churches; they killed Muslims and Christians. Bashar al-Assad applies the meaning of the phrase “No to Sectarianism” in his own way.

#Syria Nov 24/12 Kurds and Arabs …. Syrians gathered together to say no to fighting between brothers …

A plea for unity from Qamishli

02/10/12

A Free Syrian Army fighter during clashes with forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo, the nation’s largest city.

By ANBEIRUT, Lebanon — Chaos continued to spread in Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, on Monday, as rebels attacked the towering municipality building with rockets, sending civil servants fleeing from one of the few government buildings still functioning as dozens of soldiers worked to defend the city center. NE BARNARD

“We don’t want to hurt the employees, but we want them not to come to work or they will be killed,” Sa’id Abu Abdo, 25, an armed insurgent, said in Aleppo after the attack. “We will liberate each building in the city.”

In a city that was once considered a bastion of support for President Bashar al-Assad, and for a time was spared armed conflict, two months of pitched battles have taken a heavy toll, disrupting the city and threatening to open new rifts among ethnic groups that have long coexisted there.

Compared to six weeks ago, the contrast observed on Monday was striking. Municipal services have collapsed in many areas, and Christian, Kurdish and wealthy Sunni Muslim neighborhoods that had felt secure when fighting began have been the site of clashes once limited to the poorer Sunni areas. In one Aleppo neighborhood, corpses lay uncollected, gnawed by cats and dogs, and piles of garbage attracted clouds of black flies.

Most of the city’s malls and many health centers in anti government neighborhoods were closed. Even police stations appeared abandoned; the force draws mostly from rural and working-class areas where support for the uprising is strong. Some residents reported that their neighborhoods had been without drinking water or electricity for weeks.

Some Christians, historically a vital part of Aleppo’s bustling ethnic mix, have taken up arms to guard their neighborhoods and churches. Many of Syria’s minority communities have either sided with President Assad, fearing his fall would leave them vulnerable to the Sunni-led opposition, or stayed out of the conflict because they did not trust either side. One man patrolling his largely Christian neighborhood with a Kalashnikov rifle said the government was arming Armenian Christians in what he called an attempt to draw them into the conflict.

“Today it is clear for us that the Muslims from the countryside want to destroy our city,” he said. “They have nothing to lose.”

He identified himself as Gano, an Armenian member of what he called a popular committee recently organized to defend the neighborhood, Aziziyah, which was sheltering refugees from other Christian neighborhoods where fighting had broken out.

But he said he mistrusted the government, which he said was trying to revive an armed Armenian group it had once supported against Turkey.

“No way, because we will be a legitimate target for the Muslim rebels,” he said. “The regime wants to use us. We want to live in peace or leave. We are a minority in this country and cannot face the Muslim majority.”

As the fighting raged across the city Monday,11 people were killed and 20 wounded when a shell fell on the Othman Bin Matghoon Mosque in the neighborhood of Masaken Hnano during dawn prayers, the Local Coordinating Committees, an anti-Assad group, said. The Syrian state news service said that government forces had retaken control of two rebel neighborhoods and quoted residents as saying they “stressed their rejection of all acts of terrorism and sabotage committed by the mercenary terrorists,” its shorthand for rebels.

The road from Damascus to Aleppo was crowded on Saturday with government troops headed for the city.

In a city that has been a commercial hub for millenniums, business seemed to have almost halted; shopping malls were closed, and the few open shops were selling bread for five times its normal price.

In the city’s medieval center, much of the old marketplace lay in smoking ruins on Monday. Heavy, ancient stone walls had collapsed.

Nearby, the 12th-century citadel at the heart of the old city appeared to be damaged, its heavy wooden door pockmarked with bullets and a few stones broken from its gate. Government soldiers had taken up positions there, as well as in the old city’s Umayyad Mosque, where snipers could be seen on the minaret.

Even residents who supported the uprising appeared dejected about the damage to the city, where traces of fire and ash littered the old city and smoke lingered from a blaze the day before in the paint and chemical supply shops of Bab al-Nasr.

“It is a very sad city — it has been sad for the past few months,” said an anti-Assad activist who gave his name as Mohammed.

Abu Mahmoud, a wealthy, white-bearded garment merchant, exuded sadness even inside his well-appointed, undamaged home. He said he was on the verge of fleeing to Turkey, where his sons had opened a small clothing business.

“The rebels came to liberate the city,” he said. “But we got destruction, not freedom. The Assad forces don’t care about the stones or the people. The regime is ready to destroy each house, each shop and each building to keep the power for the Assad family.”

25/09/12

Syria’s main opposition coalition issued a statement on Monday, guaranteeing no vengeance attacks would be carried out against the country’s minority Alawite sect, to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs.

“No one should fear the victory of the revolution,” said SNC spokesperson George Sabra, a prominent Christian dissident who penned the statement, responding to fears that members of the Alawite sect could suffer sectarian attacks at the hands of armed rebels.

“We tell our Alawite brethren and all the Syrians, we will not allow any acts of revenge or attacks against innocent people who are not implicated in acts of killing or bloodshed,” said Sabra.

Assad’s regime has blamed terrorists and fundamentalists for violence in Syria since an uprising broke out in March last year.

Over time, the armed insurgency has grown in response to the regime’s violent crackdown on dissent.

Among those fighting are some extremist Islamists, and they have helped stoke fears over the shape Syria might take should the regime fall.

Alawites constitute the second-largest sect in Syria, which is made up of a patchwork of religious and ethnic groups.

Around 80 percent of Syrians are Sunni, while around 10 percent belong to Assad’s Alawite community, five percent are Christian, three percent Druze and one percent Ismaili.

Faced with the extremism of some elements of the armed opposition, there has been an increasing number of voices from within the revolt in recent weeks, condemning the radicalization of the uprising.

“The state will be for all, and it will provide a real opportunity for reconciliation and for the creation of genuine national unity,” Sabra said.

In the statement, Sabra issued a call to “our brothers in suffering and in aspirations” to join the revolt, noting that only those behind the commission of crimes in Syria would be held legally responsible should Assad’s regime fall.

-AFP

22/09/12

BEIRUT — A key Lebanese Christian ally of the Shiite Hezbollah movement, Michel Aoun, said he was targeted by an assassination attempt Saturday night after local media reported his convoy came under fire.

“In my lifetime, I have been the target of three assassination attempts,” the former army chief said on live television, after returning from a political tour of south Lebanon.

“This was the fourth and it failed,” he added.

“Why would they want to kill me? Because I go against the tide,” said Aoun, who was staunchly anti-Syrian during the civil war, but entered into a controversial alliance with the Iran and Syria-backed Hezbollah in 2006.

“For the first three, we found the perpetrators. We have not yet discovered the perpetrators of this attack,” he added.

Aoun leads the Free Patriotic Movement, a largely Christian party, which issued a statement Saturday that its leader’s convoy was shot at on the way back from a political tour. Lebanese media specified that the attack took place in the predominantly Sunni Muslim city of Saida.

Lebanon is deeply divided between a Western-backed opposition, which is led by former-prime minister Saad Hariri and backs the Syrian revolt, and the pro-Damascus ruling coalition, which is led by Hezbollah and includes Aoun.

Christians are split between the two sides.

Aoun has repeatedly voiced fears that a collapse of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would bring extremists to power and take Lebanon’s larger neighbour back to the Middle Ages.

Since the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, there have been a series assassinations of prominent figures in Lebanon, mainly those hostile to the Assad regime.

20/09/12

For Christians in #Syria, fear of

future reigns

Damascus, Syria (CNN) — As the 18-month-long Syrian conflict festers, the government and the opposition welcome and need Christian support.

But some Christians fear radical Islamists have been swelling rebel ranks.

CNN’s Nic Robertson recently spoke with Syrian Christians in the Damascus countryside town of Maaloula.

Christians make up 10% of the population. Syria is ruled by a government dominated by Alawites, whose faith is an offshoot of Shiism. The regime is opposed by an opposition with a large Sunni presence.

Some Christianssupport the government, others the opposition. Many want to know what an opposition government would mean for them and are apprehensive.

Antoinette Nassrallah, the Christian owner of a cafe, said she has seen government TV images depicting radical Muslim attacks on Christians. She said she has heard about such violence in Aleppo.

“We used to have a lot of tourists. But now, since last year, we never had any.”

Maria Saadeh, a newly elected parliament member, calls herself independent and says she’s in the middle. She doesn’t criticize President Bashar al-Assad but wants change through talk, not violence.

She ponders the government’s fight against the opposition and the opposition’s intentions. “We can’t ask the government to stop if we have terrorism in our land.”

Pelagia Sayaf, mother superior at a monastery, doesn’t know whether a post-Assad era will be good or bad. But she says the president loves his people. She proudly displays a picture of him and his wife visiting the convent’s orphans last year.

“The president,” she said, “we know him.”

Here are the latest key developments in the civil war in Syria:

Helicopter crashes in Damascus suburb, government says

A helicopter crashed Thursday morning in a suburb of Damascus after it clipped the tail of a Syrian Airlines passenger plane, the government said.

The plane, carrying about 200 passengers, landed safely at Damascus airport. No one on board the passenger plane was injured. State TV earlier reported that a helicopter crashed southeast of Douma.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group, said it was downed by rebels.

Meeting at The Hague focuses on toughening sanctions

The Friends of the Syrian People, a group of more than 60 countries working for regime change in Syria, considered tightening economic sanctions against the country’s government Thursday.

Participants include all the European Union countries, the United States, Canada, Australia, all the gulf states, Jordan, Turkey, the Arab League and other nations. They met at The Hague in the Netherlands.

“By imposing sanctions, we are sending an important message and helping to further isolate the regime. But sanctions will only have an impact if they are carried out effectively. That is how we can make a difference,” Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal said.

Russian aid arrives

A Russian aircraft carrying 38 tons of food supplies for beleaguered Syrians arrived in Damascus on Thursday, according to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, or SANA.

Alexander Bogdanov, deputy director of the emergencies department at the Russian Ministry of Extraordinary Situations, said that the supplies included sugar, meat, milk and canned fish.

“This aid is evidence of Russia’s principled stances toward Syria and the strong and solid relations between the Syrian and Russian governments and peoples,” said Hassan Hijazi, Syria’s assistant minister of social affairs and labor.

U.S. senator warns Iraq over airspace for Iran

Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the U.S. Foreign Relations Committee, warned Iraq to avoid “fanning the flames of violence” by allowing Iran to use its airspace to transport weapons to Syria or face possible sanctions.

Kerry’s comments Wednesday follow reports that Iran has been sending weapons through Iraq to Syria, something Iraq has vehemently denied.

Kerry raised the possibility of cutting off aid to Iraq if it didn’t take steps to address the issue.

Deaths mounting

At least 82 people were killed in fighting early Thursday, according to the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, an opposition group.

Twenty-eight of the casualties occurred in the city of Homs, 26 in Aleppo and 14 in Damascus and its suburbs.

More than 26,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in March 2011, the LCC said.

Opposition reports burned bodies, dozens of deaths

A reporter for the opposition’s Shaam News Network was among four men who were killed and their bodies burned in Hama when regime forces set fire to a house, the news agency said late Wednesday.

Adbelkareen Al’uqda, 26, used the monikers Abu Hassan and Karmo in reports, the network said. He is credited with uploading more than 1,250 videos on YouTube that captured the violence between government forces and rebels, it said.

CNN cannot independently confirm reports of violence as the Syrian government has severely limited the access of international journalists.

Aerial shelling and warplane activity

Five people were reported killed from aerial shelling of residential neighborhoods in Aleppo, the LCC said.

Warplanes were flying over the city of Tal Abyad in Raqqa province, the group said.

MiG warplane shelling was reported in Damascus countryside villages.

State TV says regime forces killed Afghan “terrorists”

Al-Assad’s forces killed more than 100 foreign fighters, described as “Afghani terrorists,” who were holed up at a school in Aleppo, SANA said.

The news agency did not say when or how the fighters were killed, nor did it spell out details about how Syrian forces determined they were Afghan fighters.

The operation took place in the Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood.

Assassination, kidnapping; border infiltration foiled

A religious endowments director who oversees the provincial cities of Daraa and Sweida was kidnapped Thursday by an armed terrorist group, the label the Assad regime has given the opposition, SANA said. The report said terrorists in a car abducted Muammar al-Shahadat in Daraa.

In Hasaka, “terrorists” shot and killed a government official, Marwan al-Husein, on Thursday, SANA said. He is head of the production department at the branch of the Military Housing Establishment in the city.

SANA said “terrorists” trying to enter Syria from Lebanon were foiled Wednesday night.

Iranian diplomacy: Meeting the opposition

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani revealed that his country has held talks with Syrian opposition groups, according to a transcript of an interview released by the Financial Times.

In the interview, Larijani said that according to reports he received, there was contact with the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria “to bring about peace and to support necessary reforms.” Larijani described the Syrian opposition as “multilayered,” without a unified leader.

It was unclear when the discussions were held or whether they yielded any progress, though Larijani said they were held in Tehran.

Report: Turkish aircraft was over international waters

A Turkish military prosecutor says forensic evidence shows that the June downing of a Turkish jet by a surface-to-air missile fired by Syria occurred over international waters, the semiofficial Anadolu news agency reported.

Syria shot down the F-4 Phantom jet on June 22, intensifying the animosity between the countries, whose once close relationship has eroded since al-Assad’s forces began cracking down on the opposition last year.

Syria said the plane violated its airspace, an allegation that Turkey vehemently disputed.

DAMASCUS (AA) - September 19, 2012 - A group of Christian youngsters are coming together to join in dissidents to fight against forces of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.

The group from capital Damascus’ Bab Tuma, Kassaa and Gassani neighborhoods are joining in what they named Ansarullah Battalion to fight under the Free Syrian Army against government forces in the prolonged civil war that killed more than 20,000 people in the past 18 months.     
Syria’s nearly two million Christians constitute 8 percent of the country’s population. 

#Syria: Battalion of the Christian community with the army free 18 9 2012

كتيبة من الطائفة المسيحية مع الجيش الحر 18 9 2012 

16/09/12

#Syria, Christian child killed by #Assad sniper

14/09/12

#Syria, Great protest photo, I think from Qamishli citiy.  Arabs and Kurds and Muslims and Christians

13/09/12

#Syria, Damascus yesterday chanting “Freedom Freedom, Muslims and Christians, Druze and Alawis”

The damaged Im Al-Zinar church is seen in the old city of Homs 05/09/2012 REUTERS/Handout

By Dominic Evans

Sept 12 (Reuters) - In a walled churchyard in the old city of Damascus, a small group of Syrians debate whether the time has come to flee one of Christianity’s ancient heartlands.

Members of a Christian community which stretches back 2,000 years, they worry that Syria’s civil war can have no happy outcome and they face an upheaval that fellow believers have already suffered elsewhere in the Middle East.

“The future is full of fear,” said one man who gave only his first name, Rami. “We hope our fate will not be that of the Christians of Iraq, but nothing is guaranteed. Now we meet in church rather than cafes because we’re afraid of being bombed.”

Rami’s friends were gathered at the Evangelical Church in the ancient Bab Touma quarter of Damascus - the city where Saint Paul began his mission to spread Christianity - a few days before Pope Benedict is due to visit neighbouring Lebanon.

As evening shadows lengthened after a Sunday service, the young men and women found temporary sanctuary in the churchyard from the civil war which has already displaced many of them.

Anticipation of Benedict’s Middle East trip has done little to lift the mood of despair which grips the estimated two million Christians in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad is battling a 17-month-old uprising against his rule.

Few Christians have supported the revolt, fearful for their future if the country’s majority Sunni Muslims choose an Islamist leadership to replace decades of ruthless but secular Assad family rule.

Neighbouring Iraq, where sectarian violence after the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein forced half the Christians to flee, offers frightening parallels, while the revival of Sunni Islamists in the 2011 Arab uprisings in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt also fills Syria’s Christians with foreboding.

Many now say they will be losers whatever the outcome of Assad’s struggle to hold on to power - suffering alongside the rest of the country if the conflict persists, and particularly vulnerable if their fear of an Islamist victory comes to pass.

“I’m thinking about leaving the country if Islamists rule Syria,” said a Catholic antiques trader in Damascus. “I expect reprisals against Christians.”

FLEEING ALEPPO

Syria’s Christians, who make up less than 10 percent of the 23 million population, include Greek Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, Maronite and Melkite Greek Catholic faithful.

Already thousands have left, part of a larger tide of displaced Syrians escaping the conflict in which opposition groups say 27,000 people have died.

Amid the relentless and increasingly sectarian violence, it is hard to know whether Christians have been victims of targeted attacks or swept up in the broader, indiscriminate bloodshed.

The Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Aleppo, Yohana Ibrahim, told Reuters that hundreds of Christian families had fled in recent weeks as rebels and soldiers battle for control of the country’s biggest city.

“In its modern history Aleppo has not seen such critical and painful times as the last few weeks. Christians have been attacked and kidnapped in monstrous ways and their relatives have paid big sums for their release,” he said.

In the central city of Homs, which saw the heaviest bloodshed earlier this year, he said several churches and Christian centres had been damaged in the fighting.

“Until a few months ago the idea of escaping had not crossed the minds of the Christians, but after the danger worsened it has become the main topic of conversation.”

Many fled to Lebanon, Turkey, Cyprus or Egypt, while Armenian Christians in Aleppo were preparing to evacuate to Armenia, he said in emailed responses to questions.

“SIDING WITH THE REGIME”

Christian reluctance to join the revolt often goes further into outright support for the 47-year-old president, who himself is from a minority faith.

Assad’s Alawite community, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam which has dominated the country’s ruling class for four decades, is about the same size as the combined Christian population.

Paolo Dall’Oglio, an Italian Jesuit priest who was expelled from Syria in June after three decades in the country, said some priests and bishops were pressured into supporting Assad, while others did so because they sympathised with authorities.

“There are a lot of Christians that are against the regime, doing a lot of work, especially on humanitarian level in the street, for the people,” he said by telephone. “(But) for cultural and security reasons, our religious leadership has sided with the regime and still are doing that.”

Those perceived ties with the Syrian leadership are likely to fuel rebel resentment against Christians - a danger which Dall’Oglio said he warned of when the uprising first broke out.

“I said to the Vatican one and a half years ago: ‘If we do nothing, we will be kicked out’. And this is what is happening,” he said. “So this is nothing to be astonished about. A lot to be upset, sorrowed and bitter, but not to be astonished about.”

Dall’Oglio, now an active supporter of the Syrian opposition, said Pope Benedict had always been clear in his support for freedom and rights.

“But the diplomacy of the Vatican has been very weak, probably weakened by the official attitudes of the local bishops and officials,” he said, adding he had just completed an eight-day fast “for the pope’s visit and the future of this country”.

SPREADING FEAR

Some Christians have held prominent positions under Assad including defence minister Daoud Rajha, assassinated on July 18 in a bombing which killed three other top security officials.

Others have taken leading roles in the political opposition to Assad’s rule, including the writer Michel Kilo who was jailed in 2007 for demanding reforms and George Sabra, who ran for presidency of the opposition Syrian National Council.

In an open letter to Christians last week, Sabra said it was not too late to throw their support behind the revolution.

“Your place in the ongoing battle for freedom across the country is still reserved, and your participation is requested,” he wrote. “What is left of a Christian’s Christianity if he is not with the cause of freedom and… building his country?”

Authorities “are spreading fabricated fear in your ranks about your Muslim brothers by talking about al Qaeda and extremist Salafists,” Sabra said.

That message has had little impact in some quarters of Damascus, where Christians, Druzes and Shi’ite Muslims have formed armed vigilante groups allied to Assad against the mainly Sunni Muslim rebels.

“They want to force us to emigrate like in Iraq. To empty the region of Christians,” said Youssef, outside the Damascus church. “At the start of the crisis we were neutral, although privately we were with the regime.”

“But now we want to arm ourselves in self defence - we have relatives who have been killed”.

Proud of their long history in Syria, which predates the Muslim presence by six centuries, Christians say their culture, literature and arts has been central to Syria’s development.

“Syrian society needs Christians and this is what we want to stress to our children - that however hard the situation, they should be patient,” said Gregorius Lahham, the Greek Melkite Patriarch of Antioch, in Turkey.

But in the courtyard of the Evangelical Church, his efforts to reassure cut little ice.

“Why is Benedict not coming to Damascus to defend our presence?” asked Lina, outside the church. “We are the foundation of this region. Christianity emerged from here and now we see it ending. We are the last Christians here.”

11/09/12

Ayman Abdel Nour