Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Aleppo ( Agenzia Fides) – The news of a massacre of 130 Christians in Aleppo by Syrian opposition groups, as reported recently by the Lebanese media and some websites is completely false.
This is confirmed to Fides by several authoritative sources in the Syrian city. The Christians of Aleppo live the dramatic situation of the conflict with difficulty and fear, but a massacre of such size is "totally unfounded": this is reported by Church sources and confirmed by the Syrian security forces.
A priest interviewed by Fides notes: "Such news serves to disseminate terror, it especially has the aim to ignite a sectarian war. Such news would also like to encourage Christians to arm themselves, so that the conflict takes on a more confessional and dangerous aspect, close to that of the Lebanon War.
They also seem to pave the way to a fragmentation of the same sectarian-based Syrian territory. This goes against the history, the culture and the real face of the Syrian society, which has always been characterized by pluralism and multiplicity".
Fides sources remind us that "in the so-called Valley of Christians, some villages, at the mercy of armed bandit attacks, in areas outside of combat, accepted a kind of militarization, forming self-defense groups. But this is against the general direction of the Church in Syria: Bishops and Patriarchs have always reiterated and today ask the faithful not to take up arms, not to yield to the logic of conflict and confrontation, but to always be agents of peace and apostles of non-violence, even at the cost of life. (PA) (Agenzia Fides 21/09/2013)
