Tag: Khabur

Jihadists release Syrian priest, 22 elderly Assyrians

August 19, 2015 Syria Assyrians, Boulos Yazigi, Catholics, Hasakah, Islamic State, Jacques Mourad, Khabur, Paolo Dall’Oglio, Qaryatain, Sadad, Syria, Yohanna Ibrahim

Five weeks after Fr. Antoine Boutros and his driver were kidnapped on their way to Sunday mass in southern Syria’s Suweida province on July 12, the Catholic parish priest has been released. Disclosure of the 50-year-old priest’s release on Aug. 15 came from the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of Antioch, . . . Read More

Bishop refutes alleged ‘revenge’ beheading

June 1, 2015 Syria Aleppo, Assyrians, Hasakah, Islamic State, Khabur, Kurds, Syria

The Catholic Bishop of Aleppo has rejected reports of the alleged “revenge” beheading of an Islamic State jihadist by an Assyrian Christian soldier in northeast Syria as “unreliable and unverifiable” rumors. According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), an unnamed fighter captured a non-Syrian jihadist last week . . . Read More

Syrian villages ‘liberated’ from Islamic State

May 22, 2015 Syria Iraq, Islamic State, Khabur, Kurds, Syria

All the villages along the Khabour River invaded by Islamic State miilitants three months ago have been liberated, according to reports given to the Catholic News Service (CNS). “This is very happy news,” Father Emanuel Youkhana, of Christian Aid Program Northern Iraq, told CNS. But he cautioned Christian villagers from . . . Read More

Assyrian Christians flee jihadists to southeast Turkey

March 27, 2015 Syria Armenians, Assyrians, Bashar al-Assad, Genocide, Iraq, Islamic State, Khabur, Kidnapping, Lebanon, Qamishli, Syriacs, Turkey

A harsh Islamic State offensive begun in late February against Syria’s dwindling Assyrian Christian population is accelerating a steady trickle of Christian refugees trying desperately to reach safety in Turkey, northern Iraq and Lebanon. But their future is far from guaranteed as refugees in Muslim-majority Turkey, where according to Turkish . . . Read More

Four years since teenage graffiti sparks Syrian civil war

March 12, 2015 Syria Aleppo, Arab Spring, Bashar al-Assad, Civil War, Daraa, Islamic State, Khabur, Syria

Four years ago this week a group of young teenagers with a can full of paint sprayed messages on a wall in the Syrian city of Daraa. They couldn’t have known it but, over the next nine days, their graffiti would escalate into the Syrian civil war, which reaches its . . . Read More

72 Assyrian Christian families captured, 50 besieged by IS after Syria attack

February 25, 2015 Syria Assyrians, Hasakah, Islamic State, Khabur, Qamishli, Syria

2009 Easter service at St Mary’s Church, Hassaka. Now only 200 Christian families remain in nearby villages.Photo: World Watch Monitor Sources from Syria’s embattled Hassaka province confirmed at midnight on Tuesday, Feb. 24, that at least 72 Assyrian Christian families – thought to be around 200 people – from three . . . Read More

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