churches – www.israelhayom.com https://www.israelhayom.com israelhayom english website Tue, 10 Sep 2019 11:29:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.2 https://www.israelhayom.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/cropped-G_rTskDu_400x400-32x32.jpg churches – www.israelhayom.com https://www.israelhayom.com 32 32 Report: Over 120 Syrian churches damaged by war since 2011 https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/09/10/report-over-120-syrian-churches-damaged-by-war-since-2011/ https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/09/10/report-over-120-syrian-churches-damaged-by-war-since-2011/#respond Tue, 10 Sep 2019 08:27:38 +0000 https://www.israelhayom.com/?p=415087 A Syrian war monitor associated with the opposition said Monday that over 120 Christian places of worship have been damaged or destroyed by all sides in the country's eight-year conflict. Some of the attacks were deliberate, such as the Islamic State group using bulldozers to destroy the ancient Saint Elian Monastery in Homs province in […]

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A Syrian war monitor associated with the opposition said Monday that over 120 Christian places of worship have been damaged or destroyed by all sides in the country's eight-year conflict.

Some of the attacks were deliberate, such as the Islamic State group using bulldozers to destroy the ancient Saint Elian Monastery in Homs province in 2015. The majority, however, were caused by front-line combat, shelling or rockets.

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Christians made up about 10% of Syria's pre-war population of 23 million, who co-existed with the Muslim majority and enjoyed freedom of worship under President Bashar Assad's government. Most have left for Europe over the past 20 years, with their flight significantly gathering speed since the start of the current conflict.

Around half of all Syrians are now either internally displaced or have left the country.

The report was issued by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, which is registered in the United Kingdom and whose founder and chairman lives in Qatar.

The group, which collects statistics on the war, said that government forces were responsible for 60% of the 124 documented attacks since fighting erupted in March 2011. The rest were blamed on ISIS, the al-Qaida-linked group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other factions of the armed opposition.

There was no immediate comment from the government, which rarely comments on reports from foreign organizations.

"Targeting Christian places of worship is a form of intimidation against and displacement of the Christian minority in Syria," said Fadel Abdul Ghany, the founder and chairman of SNHR.

The report said that ISIS was behind 10 attacks on Christian sites, five of which were in the northern city of Raqqa, once the extremists' de facto capital. The group was known for displacing and killing Christians in areas it controlled as well as confiscating their properties.

Hardest hit was the northern province of Aleppo, with 34 attacks, 24 by rebels and six by the government.

The highest number of attacks by government forces – 27 out of 29 – was in the central province of Homs.

SNHR's report also placed blame on Syrian government allies Russia and Iran but did not specify how many of the attacks they'd caused.

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7 arrested in connection with Sri Lanka bombings that killed over 200 https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/04/21/explosions-kill-at-least-138-in-sri-lanka-on-easter-sunday/ https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/04/21/explosions-kill-at-least-138-in-sri-lanka-on-easter-sunday/#respond Sun, 21 Apr 2019 09:28:22 +0000 https://www.israelhayom.com/?p=359465 Seven people were arrested and three police officers were killed during a raid on a house in Colombo on Sunday as the death toll from a rash of bombings at churches and hotels in Sri Lanka rose past 200, police and local media said. Near-simultaneous blasts that rocked three churches and three luxury hotels in […]

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Seven people were arrested and three police officers were killed during a raid on a house in Colombo on Sunday as the death toll from a rash of bombings at churches and hotels in Sri Lanka rose past 200, police and local media said.

Near-simultaneous blasts that rocked three churches and three luxury hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, Sri Lanka's transportation minister reported Sunday afternoon.

The government has imposed a curfew from 6 p.m. Sunday evening until 6 a.m. Monday morning as a manhunt for the perpetrators was underway.

Two of the blasts were suspected to have been carried out by suicide bombers, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak with reporters. Worshippers and hotel guests were among the dead, the official said.

The magnitude of the bloodshed recalled Sri Lanka's decadeslong civil war, when separatist Tamil Tigers and other rebel groups targeted the Central Bank, a shopping mall, a Buddhist temple and hotels popular with tourists.

No one has claimed responsibility for Sunday's blasts.

St. Anthony's Shrine and the three hotels where the blasts took place are in Colombo, and are frequented by foreign tourists. A National Hospital spokesman, Dr. Samindi Samarakoon, told AP they received 47 dead, including nine foreigners, and were treating more than 200 wounded.

Local TV showed damage at the Cinnamon Grand, Shangri-La and Kingsbury hotels.

The Shangri-La's second-floor restaurant was gutted in the blast, with the ceiling and windows blown out. Loose wires hung and tables were overturned in the blackened space.

A police magistrate was at the hotel to inspect the bodies recovered from the restaurant. From outside the police cordon, three bodies could be seen covered in white sheets.

Alex Agieleson, who was near the shrine, said buildings shook with the blast, and that a number of injured people were carried away in ambulances.

Other blasts were reported at St. Sebastian's Church in Negombo, a majority Catholic town north of Colombo, and at Zion Church in the eastern town of Batticaloa. St. Sebastian's appealed for help on its Facebook page.

The explosion ripped off the roof and knocked out doors and windows at St. Sebastian's, where people carried the wounded away from blood-stained pews, TV footage showed.

Sri Lankan security officials said they were investigating. Police immediately sealed off the areas.

Sri Lankan security forces in 2009 defeated Tamil Tiger rebels who had fought to create an independent homeland for the country's ethnic minority Tamils. The U.N. initially estimated the death toll from 26 years of fighting to be about 100,000 but a U.N. experts' panel later said some 45,000 ethnic Tamils may have been killed in the last months of the fighting alone.

Government troops and the Tamil Tigers were both accused of grave human rights violations, which prompted local and international calls for investigations.

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