Արևելահայերեն
Արևմտահայերեն
РусскийAnother attack on Christian-populated Maalula of Syria
Terrorist groups have attacked the Maalula Convent located in western Syria and have taken head of the convent Pelagea, the nuns and several children staying at the adjacent orphanage hostage.
The convent has been besieged and the head of the convent and the nuns have been taken hostage for the past three months already. The road to the convent is under the control of the snipers, making it difficult to send humanitarian assistance.
Syria’s Minister of Social Affairs, Head of the High Humanitarian Commission Kinda Ash Shamat has expressed deep concerns over the terrorist attack on Maalula Convent.
Kinda Ash Shamat has announced that the bandits and their supporting countries are responsible for the fate of the convent’s head and the five nuns whom they have taken hostage. Ash Shamat has urged the international community and international organizations to pressure the parties having an influence on and sponsoring the terrorists to release the nuns, reports SANA.
Maalula is a settlement with a population of nearly 100 people and is known to the world for the fact that the residents speak in the almost dead Hebrew, the older version of which was common in the Near East 200 years ago. It is considered that Jesus Christ also spoke with his contemporaries in that language. The leaders of the Al Nusra Front don’t hide their intentions to create an Islam Emirate in Syria where there will no longer be other religions.
Prior to the civil war, Christians made up 10 percent of the population in Syria. After 2011, nearly 1,000 Christians have been killed, nearly 40 churches and other Christian institutions have been destroyed. Nearly 300,000 Christians have left the country. The latest kidnapping of Christian leaders in Syria and the decapitation of the Catholic priest show that the brutality in Syria and the crisis of the Christians in the entire Arab World is only getting worse.
Syria has been in a civil war for two years now. In that period, based on the UN’s statistics, more than 126,000 people have died, 2 million have become refugees and another 4 million have been internally displaced. Nearly 6,000 Syrians become refugees every day.
