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Syrian Church BOMBED and DESTROYED as Christian priest is abducted in Middle East
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Before and after photos of a Syrian church in Aleppo surfaced over the internet after a church was ruthlessly bombed. The photo shows the after photo of just how devastated the church was, with its roof completely torn off.
Highlights
Catholic Online (https://www.catholic.org)
7/10/2015 (1 decade ago)
Published in Middle East
Keywords: bombing, syria, terrorism, ISIS, church, priest, abduction, kidnap, Christian, Catholic, Islam, Muslim
MUNTINLUPA, PHILIPPINES (Catholic Online) - There is no available information regarding when the attack actually happened or which armed force was the mastermind in the latest development. The worries of the Christian minority and their overseas supporters are heightened by several reports that a Syrian priest was also kidnapped and another church in Iraq was bombed by ISIS.
According to The Custody of the Holy Land, which oversees the activity of the Franciscan Order in the Near East, it lost communication with one of its priests in Syria and fears the possible abduction of the priest by the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front. Father Dhiya Aziz was a parish priest in the principally Christian hamlet of Yacoubieh in the northwestern Idlib province.
"Some militants of an unknown armed brigade, perhaps connected with the Nusra Front, came to take him away for a brief interview with the emir of the place," explained The Custody of the Holy Land. "From that moment we do not have any more news and we are unable to trace his whereabouts at the present moment. We are doing everything possible to locate the place of his detention and secure his release."
The group asks for prayers for his well-being.
If the reports are true, it means that Father Aziz now has joined other leading Christian figures in the region abducted, including Greek Orthodox Bishop Boulos Yazigi, Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Gregorius Yohanna Ibrahim, and Jesuit Father Paolo Dall'Oglio, all missing for two years.
It was reported, last Tuesday, ISIS had additionally bombed the remarkable Mother of Aid church in Mosul, Iraq.
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