The Armenian Catholic archbishop of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, has told the Fides news agency that rebel rocket fire has damaged his residence and a Catholic school.

“It was a pretty powerful missile which damaged the school and one wing of the building, breaking the doors and shattering many windows,” Archbishop Boutros Marayati told the Fides news agency. “Another missile, less powerful, fell on our school yesterday.”

Despite the rocket attacks, Aleppo residents went to the polls to cast their ballots in the June 3 presidential election. “All citizens are for various reasons siding with [Bashar al-]Assad,” said Archbishop Marayati. Assad, who has led the nation since 2000, won the election with nearly 89% of the vote.

http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=21621

More than 90% of the people of Qaraqosh, a largely Catholic city of over 40,000 in Syria, have fled as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant moved to capture the area.

The jihadist group now controls approximately one-quarter of Syria and one-third of Iraq.

Archbishop Youhanna Boutros Moshe, who is among the few who remain in the city, told the Fides news agency that he appealed “to the consciences of political leaders around the world, to international organizations and to all men of good will: it is necessary to intervene immediately to put a stop to the deterioration of the situation, working not only at a humanitarian level, but also politically and diplomatically.”

“Every hour, every day lost, is likely to make all unrecoverable. Inaction becomes complicity with crime and abuse of power,” he added. “The world cannot turn a blind eye to the tragedy of people who have fled from their homes in a few hours, taking with them only the clothes they are wearing.”

http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=21840

An air-launched missile has caused severe damage to a Franciscan monastery in Yacubiyah, a town in northwest Syria.

The region’s Franciscan province, founded by St. Francis in 1209, reported that no one was killed in the attack.

http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=22080

The jihadists of Islamic State have seized their first territory inside Lebanon, a long-feared strike that threatens the country's uneasy sectarian balance.

A Syrian rebel group which has sworn allegiance to the Islamic State's leader has set up check-points in the Lebanese town of Arsal on the two countries' border, though it has stopped short of declaring it part of the IS's "Caliphate".

Lebanese army troops have moved up to attack the town, pouring in shells and putting at risk not only the 40,000 local inhabitants but the estimated 120,000 Syrian refugees who have taken shelter there.

The crisis brought a rare show of unity from Syria's competing political factions, with the Sunni prime minister Tammam Salam standing alongside the rest of the cabinet to give a statement. "The attack on Lebanese national dignity will not go unpunished," he said, calling Islamic State's behaviour "sick".

However, the broader jihadist movement in Syria has won support from Sunni clerics inside Lebanon, which also has its own branch of the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. Jabhat al-Nusra is also said to have participated in the seizure of Arsal, though a statement it issued was ambiguous.

The immediate trigger for the Islamic State's move was the arrest on Saturday by the Lebanese army of Abu Ahmed Joumaa, the leader of a small brigade in the Free Syrian Army who subsequently declared allegiance to Islamic State.

Arsal occupies a highly sensitive position as a Sunni town on the border, and has been used as an escape and supply route by the mainly Sunni Syrian rebels throughout the cινιℓ ωαr. However, it is surrounded by Shia areas that are largely controlled by Hizbollah, which is fighting on the side of the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Hizbollah has said it will help the army retake Arsal, threatening a long-feared spillover of the Syrian war into a sectarian conflict inside Lebanon itself.

The army says it arrested Joumaa because he intended to attack army outposts and declare Arsal an "Islamic emirate".

So far, the army says it has found the bodies of 50 militants, and lost 14 of its own men. More than 22 police and soldiers have been seized by the Islamic State and taken away, as captives or hostages.

The incursion may be linked to renewed fighting on the Syrian side of the border, where the rebels were beaten back in a major offensive earlier this year but have continued to stage attacks, including over the weekend.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/11011833/Islamic-State-seizes-territory-inside-Lebanon.html

The Franciscan priest who was kidnapped in Syria on Sunday night had recently appealed to an Islamic court for protection against Islamic militants, the Fides news service reports.

Father Hanna Jallouf had led a Christian community in the village of Knayeh, which is under the control of rebel groups associated with the Islamic State. He had kept his church and school open despite regular harassment, by keeping open lines of communication with leaders of the rebel groups.

In the absence of any government agencies in the region, Father Jallouf had lodged a plea with the Islamic court for an end to the harassment of his community. Shortly thereafter, he and at least 20 parishioners were seized by Islamic militants. Their current whereabouts are notknown.

http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=22865

Raqqa (Agenzia Fides) – In Raqqa, the city of northern Syria which has become a stronghold of the jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) since 2014, counts only 23 Christian families of the 1500 who lived there before the beginning of the Syrian conflict. The violence of Islamist fanaticism strikes down on this small community made up of Armenian Christians, who were unable to leave the city for lack of resources or because of age and health reasons with the methodical aspect of the administrative and bureaucratic practices: they have recently been informed about the parameters of the jizya, the "protection tax" they will have to pay from 16 November if they do not want to be expelled and dispossessed of their homes and that amounts to the equivalent of $ 535. The information reported by the Christians in Raqqa, was released by the Arab site, ankawa.com. In all likelihood Christian families, impoverished by the war, will not be able to pay the tax and will have to leave their homes.
The jizya tax had to be paid, until the nineteenth century, by every non-Muslim subject to the Islamic authorities as a clause of the "pact" which guaranteed them protection from external aggression and freedom of worship. In Raqqa the jihadists of Is - who took total control of the city in early 2014, after having met with other Islamist anti-Assad factions - have turned the main Armenian church in offices for the management of Islamic affairs and the promotion of sharia. In the stronghold city the militia of the Islamic State have already expropriated the property of the Christians fled, and they also organized symbolic actions, such as the burning of Bibles and Christian books. The kidnapping of the Jesuit Fr. Paolo Dall'Oglio is attributed to the jihadist faction of IS. (GV) (Agenzia Fides 15/11/2014)

http://www.fides.org/en/news/36768-ASIA_SYRIA_25_Christian_families_still_in_Raqqa_Obligation_to_pay_a_protection_tax