Militants affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a splinter al Qaeda group, launched an overnight attack on Mosul seizing control of the governor’s headquarters, television stations, as well as freeing hundreds of prisoners held in jails.
Leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized nations decided Thursday to tighten defenses against the risk of terror attacks by European jihadists returning from the Syrian front.
Open Doors has just released the “Top Ten” countries where Christians are most persecuted for their faith.
Syrian President Bashar Assad has won re-election in a landslide with 88.7 percent of the vote, Syria’s parliament speak said Wednesday night.
Opposition figures have accused the Syrian regime of hiding chemical weapons in remote Alawite regions of northwestern Syria, defying its international commitment to eliminate its chemical stockpile by the end of June.
For the first time in the bloody civil war tearing the country apart, an American citizen carried out a suicide bombing in Syria.
President Barack Obama is close to authorizing a mission led by the U.S. military to train moderate Syrian rebels to fight the regime of Bashar al-Assad and al Qaeda-linked groups, a move that would expand Washington’s role in the conflict, U.S. officials said.
An official report by the Directorate General of Antiquities has documented the destruction inflicted on Maaloula and its historical sites by Islamist rebel fighters after pro-Assad forces had regained the Syrian city, according to International Christian Concern.
Eighty Christians were killed and thousands more displaced after Islamic militants attacked the strategic Syrian town of Kessab near the Turkish border on March 21, according to Barnabas Aid.
Using the Twitter social networking site, Lebanon’s March 14 General Secretariat Coordinator warned Christians that backing President Bashar al-Assad would backfire on their own communities, according to NOW news.
The World Evangelical Alliance has called for the protection of Syria’s Christian population ahead of the upcoming peace conference in Geneva, according to International Christian Concern.
A blasphemy allegation may have led to an arson attack on an historic library owned by a church leader in Lebanon this month, according to Barnabas Aid.
Homes have been vandalized and plundered while the bodies of Christians lie along the roads of a small Christian village north of Damascus after it was invaded by Islamist insurgents last Thursday.
In the battle for Syria between forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and rebel jihadist factions, violent contests for the control of small Christian villages are often under-reported by the mainstream media.
Last week’s disappearance of an Italian Jesuit priest in Syria suggested foul play following the kidnappings of two other clergy in April, according to Morning Star News.
According to the Assyrian International News Agency, Assyrian Christians who have fled from an area of Syria called al-Thawrah (also known as al-Tabqah), have been told by rebels, “If you want to come back, convert to Islam, or you will be killed.”
Every year, millions of Muslims, mostly women, go on pilgrimage to Marian shrines in Egypt, Syria, Portugal and Lebanon, according to Asia News.
Another massacre reportedly carried out by Free Syrian Army militants has targeted the residents of al-Duwayr/Douar, a Christian village close to the city of Homs and near Syria’s border with Lebanon, according to Syria Report.
A Catholic priest has been publicly beheaded by suspected Islamic militants in northern Syria after accusations of collaborating with President Bashar Assad’s government, Worthy News established Tuesday, July 2.
Minority Christians in Iraq feared more violence Saturday, June 29, after several Assyrian Christian shops and one church were attacked, killing two people and injuring a dozen others, church representatives said.