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Syrian rebels take Christian village near Damascus and forcefully convert..

doremon

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AMMAN, Jordan -- Syrian rebels led by al Qaeda-linked fighters seized control of a predominantly Christian village northeast of Damascus, sweeping into the mountainside sanctuary in heavy fighting overnight and forcing hundreds of residents to flee, activists and locals said Sunday.

The battle over Maaloula, an ancient village that is home to two of the oldest surviving monasteries in Syria, has thrown a spotlight on the deep-seated fears that many of Syria's religious minorities harbor about the growing role of Islamic extremists on the rebel side in the civil war against President Bashar Assad's regime.

The prominence of al Qaeda-linked fighters has factored into the reluctance of Western powers to provide direct military support to the rebels. It has also figured in the debate underway in the U.S. Congress over whether to launch military strikes against Syria in retaliation for an alleged chemical weapons attack last month.

After days of clashes in and around Maaloula, rebels captured the village following fierce fighting late Saturday, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group. Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman said the assault was led by Jabhat al-Nusra, an al Qaeda-affiliated group, as well as by the Qalamon Liberation Front.

He said around 1,500 rebels were inside Maaloula, while the army had the village surrounded.

Syria's state news agency provided a dramatically different account of the battle, saying the military reported "progress" in its offensive in Maaloula.

"The army continued its military operation against terrorist elements in Maaloula village and its vicinity, inflicting a heavy casualty in the ranks of the terrorists, including their leaders," the news agency said.

State-run TV reported that all churches in Maaloula were now safe and the army was chasing gunmen in the western hills.

But residents of Maaloula reached by telephone described fierce battles in the streets that forced them and other locals to flee as opposition fighters flooded the village.

One resident said the rebels - many of them wearing beards and shouting, "God is great!" - attacked Christian homes and churches shortly after seizing the village.

"They shot and killed people. I heard gunshots and then I saw three bodies lying in the middle of a street in the old quarters of the village," the resident said by telephone. "So many people fled the village for safety."

Now, he said, Maaloula "is a ghost town."

"Where is President Obama to see what befallen on us?" asked the man, who fled the village on Sunday. He declined to give his name out of fear for his safety.

Another resident who escaped earlier in the day said Assad's forces were deployed on the outskirts of the village, while gunmen inside refused to allow anybody in. He said that one of the churches, called Demyanos, had been torched and that gunmen stormed into two other churches and robbed them.

A third resident reached by phone said he saw militants forcing some Christian residents to convert to Islam.

"I saw the militants grabbing five villagers Wednesday and threatening them: `Either you convert to Islam or you will be beheaded,'" he said.

The two other residents said they heard rumors about such conversions but did not see them. The reports could not be independently verified. All three residents spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.

Situated about 60 kilometers northeast of Damascus, Maaloula had been firmly under the regime's grip despite sitting in the middle of rebel-held territory east and north of the capital.

The village was a major tourist attraction before the civil war. Some of its residents still speak a version of Aramaic, the language of biblical times believed to have been used by Jesus.

The attack highlights fears among Syrian Christians that the alternative to Assad's regime - which is made up mostly of Alawites, followers of an offshoot of Shiite Islam - would not tolerate minority religions.

Such concerns have helped Assad retain the support of large chunks of Syria's minority communities, including Christians, Alawites, Druze and ethnic Kurds. Most of the rebels and their supporters are Sunni Muslims.

Read more: Syrian rebels take Christian village near Damascus: activists | CTV News
 
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Let's be honest,Assad doesn't kill christians because he has no reason in alienating them,it's the crazy jihadists,if the FSA would get rid of them they would have more international support.

No, it could be the pro-Assad armed Shia militias, which means Assad must have gotten involved in one way or the other.

Sad incident .
But the news report says rebels led by Al-Qaeda-linked fighters .

Yes sir, I know, but there are extermist groups on Assad's side as well. :)
 
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Yes sir, I know, but there are extermist groups on Assad's side as well. :)

May be but I have not heard about Christians being attacked by Assad's men during his ruling period .

AFAIK , he was very friendly with the Christians . So why now ??

PS : Please don't sir me , buddy .
 
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Nusra speaking to nuns saying they will leave, only to break Assad barrier, don't harm innocents or shrines

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regime forces shelling and destroying churches and envirement



Do you support Al Nusra? As much as I hate basher al assad, i'm pretty sure he's not going to start massacring a percentage of people that are potentially his supporters or at least not against him.
 
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False news as expected by the Child-Murderer supporters and pagans.

The monastery and all the Christian residents have been left in peace. Even one of the nuns confirmed this.

The Syrian opposition has controlled the outskirts and some areas of the town for 8 months without any incidents. Now when all the Child-Murderers (Al-Assad thugs) have been eliminated Child-Murderer supporters cry.:lol:

The Christians who have actively supported the genocide of the Child-Murderer and this regime will face the same punishment as anyone else. Whether Nusayri or "Sunni" or should I rather say Ba'athi.

If anyone here thinks that Christian blood is more precious or deserve more publicity than Muslim blood or anyone else then they are surely mistaken.
 
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May be but I have not heard about Christians being attacked by Assad's men during his ruling period .

AFAIK , he was very friendly with the Christians . So why now ??

PS : Please don't sir me , buddy .

The Shia armed Militias are pro-Assad, though they don't do everything accordingly to Assad, but maybe to serve their interests.
 
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Syrian war makes sudden appearance at convent in iconic Christian town

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SANA/Via EPA - A undated handout picture shows a church in the Maaloula village, northeast of Damascus, Syria. Fighters from Free Syrian Army units briefly gained control of ancient Christian Maaloula village, accounting to reports.

By Liz Sly, E-mail the writer
BEIRUT — High in the mountains above Damascus lies a town so remote that Syria’s war had passed it by, so untouched by time that its inhabitants still speak the language of Jesus.

The violence ravaging the rest of Syria has finally caught up with Maaloula, renowned as the oldest Christian community in the world — and the last in which the same version of Aramaic that prevailed 2,000 years ago is the native tongue.

On Sunday, Syrian rebels, including some affiliated with al-Qaeda, swept through Maaloula for the second time in four days, after an assault a few days earlier in which the last of its few thousand residents fled and the specter of unchecked violence threatened to convulse the iconic town.

Only a couple of dozen nuns remained, cowering in fear as warplanes screeched overhead, shells exploded and al-Qaeda-linked fighters overran their convent, turning them into witnesses to what may be one of the more extraordinary encounters of the Syrian war.

The monks had fled from their nearby monastery months ago, and even the last two priests who oversaw the affairs of Maaloula’s ancient Mar Takla nunnery took buses out of town last week, leaving the nuns of Maaloula to fend for themselves as the fighters closed in.

With Congress poised to debate President Obama’s proposed military intervention in Syria, the arrival of war in Maaloula illuminates the complexity of a conflict that has defied all attempts at resolution for 21 / 2 years. The future of Christianity in the region of its birth is just one of the smaller issues at stake in the discussions expected to unfold.

The fight for Maaloula began Wednesday, when rebels of the Free Syrian Army launched an assault aided by a suicide bomber from Jabhat al-Nusra, which is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government because of its declared affiliation with al-Qaeda.

The bomber, said by other fighters to be a Jordanian, blew himself up at the Syrian army checkpoint commanding entrance to the town, killing seven government loyalists. Other rebel units, most of them less extremist, swarmed into the town, which in past years lured Christian pilgrims from around the world to explore its ancient sites and listen to the Christian liturgy preached in Aramaic in its churches.

Firing volleys of gunfire into the air, according to videos posted on YouTube, the rebels roamed through the town in pickup trucks and said they had “cleansed” Maaloula of supporters of the regime.

They also vowed not to attack Christians and proclaimed, “We must not harm any church . . . we target only those who shoot at us,” a commander told the camera. “These people are our families . . . these icons of the church and those people here and there, they should stay in peace.”

And then they departed Friday, almost as abruptly as they had arrived. They attacked the town, several rebel spokesmen said, only as part of an offensive to secure control of a major road between the strategically vital city of Homs and the capital, Damascus, both at the forefront of the broader battle for control of Syria — a battle that has been waged by the family of President Bashar al-Assad for 40 years.

But when the rebels moved in, the elders of the town “were afraid of airstrikes and shelling,” said Abu Shamso, an activist with the rebels, speaking by Skype from a nearby opposition-controlled village in the mountains northwest of Damascus.

“They wanted us to go, so we left,” he said.

Overnight Saturday, the rebels surged back into the town, including members of Jabhat al-Nusra. They surrounded the Mar Takla convent, which was built into mountains where persecuted early Christians found sanctuary many centuries ago.

The 27 nuns and the two dozen or so orphans they are caring for remained inside, huddled in an ancient cavern known as the Christmas Cave because it resembles the caves in Bethlehem where Jesus was born, said the convent’s mother superior, Pelagia Sayaf, who was interviewed by telephone and has been in charge of the nunnery since 1990.

The cave also offered protection from the MIG fighter jets that began dropping bombs on the town to dislodge the rebels and the shelling that routinely targets towns across the country that are seized by rebels.

Late Sunday, the Jabhat al-Nusra fighters entered the convent and asked the nuns to appear in a video to declare that they had not been harmed. Such videos serve as the chief medium of communication for all parties to the Syrian opposition.

There were 25 fighters in all, Sayaf said. The one who negotiated with her spoke with a Saudi accent, while others appeared to be from Afghanistan or Chechnya, she said. Several spoke no Arabic, and all of her comments were interpreted from Arabic into English by one of the fighters to the others, she said, leading her to suspect that some were Americans.

In the video, she told the fighters that she had not been harmed, which, she said, is true.

And then, she said, the fighters withdrew from the convent. The nuns remain, praying and expressing no opinions about their hopes for the outcome of a war that could soon engulf the town.

“If you had heard so many explosions in any other place on Earth, many people would be dead,” Sayaf said. “It is because of our faith that we are alive.”

And, she added, “Maaloula is a very special place.”


Suzie Haidamous and Ahmed Ramadan contributed to this report.
 
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