Rebels capture historic Christian town
Another resident in the village, speaking anonymously, told the Telegraph that his neighbor was slaughtered in his home, and that rebels had tried to “force a man to convert to Islam.”
The tabloid Daily Mail quotes one Maaloula resident who said the rebels, many of whom with beards and shouted “Allahu Akbar,” attacked Christian homes and churches shortly after moving into the village.
“They shot and killed people. I heard gunshots and then I saw three bodies lying in the middle of a street in the old quarters of the village. Where is President Obama to see what has befallen us?”
The Mail quotes another Christian resident who said: ‘I saw the militants grabbing five villagers and threatening them and saying, ‘Either you convert to Islam, or you will be beheaded’.”
Another said one church had been torched, and that gunmen stormed into two other churches and robbed them.
Mother Pelagia Sayah, who heads the Mar Takla convent in Maaloula, denied reports that churches and monasteries had been attacked.
The rebels said in a video they released that their intention was to blow up a Syrian army position in the village there “that was used to harm Muslims.”
The rebels also vowed not to attack Christians and proclaimed, “We must not harm any church. . . we target only those who shoot at us,” a commander told the camera. “These people are our families. . . these icons of the church and those people here and there, they should stay in peace.”
AP reports that the video shows a masked commander surrounded by eight masked gunmen, saying “we will soon withdraw from this city not out of fear but to leave the homes to their owners.”
The commander also explains that the sound of explosions and shooting heard in the background were from regime forces shelling the village.
The Post quotes Syria officials who said the army shelled suspected rebel positions on the hills surrounding the area in a bid to isolate the opposition forces in the village.
The video referred to in the AP report also shows two nuns saying they were well-treated by the rebels. “They behaved well with us and they did not harm us,” one nun says at the rebels’ prompting.
All but some fifty of the town’s 3,300 inhabitants have fled, according to a resident who left the area in the past days. About half of those remaining in the town are nuns, and the rest are orphans cared for by the nuns.
The man, who preferred to be identified, said a cease-fire Monday morning allowed paramedics to evacuate ten wounded Christian residents. He added that one church on the western side of the village was burnt by the rebels.
A nun who lives in the town told the Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV that Nusra Front members entered her convent early Monday and took pictures and videos of the site.
“The Syrian army is on the outskirts,” said Mother Pelagia Sayah, who heads the Mar Takla convent. “There are sporadic clashes and I can hear the sound of warplanes.”
The Independent reports that Sayah said that she had spoken to three of the rebels, and that two had a Saudi accent while the third one had an Afghani or Chechen accent.
She said that the nuns and the orphans kept praying throughout the fight for the town. “If you had heard so many explosions in any other place on Earth, many people would be dead,” Sayah said. “It is because of our faith that we are alive.”
“Maaloula is a very special place,” she added.
