Aleppo (Agenzia Fides) – The Christian village of Kanayé, Orontes River, in the Governorate of Idlib, has been invaded by Islamist militants that terrorize the population, threaten a massacre and have imposed the Islamic law. This is what was reported to Fides Agency by Mgr. Giuseppe Nazzaro, vicar emeritus of Aleppo, who received an alarming report by the faithful Christians of Aleppo. This has become a pattern that repeats itself and that in recent weeks has focused on a number of Christian villages: armed guerrillas penetrate into the village, terrorize civilians, commit kidnappings, kill, sow destruction. “In Kanayé Salafi militants and the jihadists of ‘Jabhat al-Nousra’ have imposed on the pastor not to ring bells. Women must not go out on the street bare-headed, but must be veiled. And if they do not obey these orders, the threat is massacre”, reads a note of Msr. Nazzaro, sent to Fides.
“We are facing what they have already done in the nearby village of Ghassanieh for over a year. In Ghassanieh they warned the residents to leave the village immediately, otherwise they would have killed them, and they got the desired result: to occupy the village with what Christians possessed. In Kanayé, they have not imposed on the population to leave but to live according to the Islamic law”. According to the vicar emeritus, “this could be the first step: tomorrow they will force them to convert to Islam”.
In recent days, Fr. George Louis, Greek-Catholic parish priest of the village of Qara, which has been devastated and burned, explained to Fides: “Maalula, Sednaya, Sadad, Qara and Deir Atieh, Nebek: armed jihadists target a village, they invade it, kill people, burn and devastate it. For civilians, Christian or non-Christians, life is always more difficult. The foreign militia act out of the control of our Syrian Free Syrian Army (FSA) compatriots, who instead respect everyone, and they do not want to raze the entire country”. (PA) (Agenzia Fides 16/12/2013)
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