Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Hassaké (Agenzia Fides) - The Syrian village of Tel Hormuz, attacked in recent days by the jihadist of the Islamic State (Is), is back under the control of the People's Security Unit (YPG), Kurdish militias operating in the Syrian province, north-east of Jazira. The cross that IS had ordered to remove from the local church’s dome was also reestablished back onto the church. This was reported by local sources contacted by Agenzia Fides.
In late January, a group of militants of the Islamic State had ransacked the church and forced the inhabitants to remove the cross from the sacred building. In the last two days, Syrian army units and Kurdish militias, along with other armed groups such as the autonomous Iraqi militia Maghawir, developed a strong counter-offensive in areas controlled by jihadis of the IS, managing for now to get the better and recover large sections of the rural areas around Hassake and Quamishli. The anti-Assad militiamen were driven out from villages like Bab al-Khair and Sabaa Skor, which they controlled for almost a year. Now in the middle of the clashes there are some villages in the region crossed by the river Khabur, founded in the 1930s by the Assyrian and Chaldean Christians who arrived from Iraq to escape the massacres perpetrated then by the Iraqi army. Those villages, once inhabited by thousands of people, with churches and a very active community, have almost all emptied since the war and some of them look like ghost towns. "A further complication - explains to Agenzia Fides Jacques Behnan Hindo, Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Hassaké-Nisibi - is represented by tensions and clashes which have erupted recently between the Syrian army and Kurdish militias loyal to Assad. Both are fighting together against the jihadists, but recently the Kurds seem willing to move independently, with the obvious intent to gain ground. A perspective intended to come into collision with the objectives of the army of Assad". (GV) (Agenzia Fides 06/02/2015)
