Source: www.worthynews.com
Date: December 5, 2024
by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – Christians in Syria are understood to be concerned for their safety as the Islamist insurgent group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham has launched an ongoing major attack on the dictatorial Iran and Russia-backed regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Crosswalk reports. Pool
Prior to the current offensive which began last week, war-torn Muslim majority Syria ranked 12 on the Open Doors World Watch List 2024 of the top 50 countries where Christians are persecuted.
In a statement to CBN News following the insurgents’ capture of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, on November 27, Analyst Jonathan Spyer, a Syria expert from the Middle East Forum said: “This is unprecedented for the rebellion. The rebellion never held all of Aleppo, and it was expelled from all of Aleppo because it held the eastern part of the city for a while in 2016.”
“There is some cause for legitimate concern here because, in the past, when we’ve seen HTS and its predecessor organizations Al Nusra, which was at one time the franchise of al-Qaida in Syria – well, we’ve seen them take over areas in the past where Christians live,” Syper explained.
“Christians have been treated badly up to and including forced conversions to Islam and other acts of that nature. So, nothing terrible has happened yet. But certainly, we should be watching carefully because this is an area of legitimate concern,” Syper added.