Syrian president visits Christian village recaptured from rebels

BEIRUT // Syria’s president marked Easter with a tour of an ancient Christian village recently recaptured from rebels, as the country’s Greek Orthodox Patriarch vowed that the country’s Christians “will not submit” to extremists.

Syrian state TV and the official Sana news agency said president Bashar Al Assad visited the hilltop hamlet of Maaloula, inspecting the damage done in recent fighting to its monasteries and churches.

Rebels, including fighters from the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, seized Maaloula several times late last year, most recently in December. Government troops swept through the village last Monday, sending rebel fighters fleeing to nearby hills.

Maaloula is located about 60 kilometres northeast of Damascus and is home to a large Christian population. The army’s triumph in the village was an important symbolic prize for the government in its quest to be seen as protector of religious minorities, including Syria’s Christians, who have largely supported the Assad family’s decades of rule.

During his visit to the village, Mr Al Assad promised to defend Christians – who make up about 10 per cent of Syria’s pre-war population of 23 million – and protect churches that he said were part of the country’s cultural heritage.

“Nobody, regardless of the extent of their terror, can erase our cultural and human history,” Sana quoted the president as saying as he surveyed damage to the Mar Takla Greek Orthodox monastery.

Mr Al Assad’s forces and rebels trying to overthrow him are locked in a civil war in which more than 150,000 people have been killed. Millions more have been driven from their homes during the three-year-old conflict.

In comments to mark Easter, Patriarch John Yazigi called on the warring sides to end the practice of “intimidation, displacement, extremism and takfiri mentality”, a term for Islamic extremists. Such radicals have become increasingly influential among rebels, attacking Christians– who they see as infidels – partly as punishment for their support of Mr Al Assad.

The Syrian conflict has taken on increasingly sectarian overtones over the past year, pitting Sunni rebels against a regime dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam to which the president’s family also belongs.

In Damascus, four people, including two children, were killed in two separate attacks on Sunday, Sana reported. At least 11 people were wounded when mortar shells exploded in the Umayyad and Arnous squares around noon.

Also on Sunday, four French journalists kidnapped and held for 10 months in Syria returned home. The families of the four – Edouard Elias, Didier Francois, Nicolas Henin and Pierre Torres – were greeted by President Francois Hollande in an informal welcome ceremony Sunday morning.

The four journalists arrived in a special plane that brought them from a town near the Turkish border where the were released early on Saturday.

* Associated Press