zoqaserve.blogg.se - Syria battle tanks destroyed during the civil war.

The Saint Martyrs’ Church was part of an Armenian genocide memorial complex built in 1989-1991. In January, Aleppo’s Armenian Catholic Church of Saint Rita was severely damaged by shelling blamed on Islamist rebels.Īnother church located in Deir ez-Zor, eastern Syria, was blown up in September. The Church of Forty Martyrs is the third Syrian Armenian religious site known to have been fully or partly destroyed in the past eight months. “They did that with the aim of devastation as there is no population left there.”

“They have dropped more than 100 gas tanks filled with explosives on the area’s churches and cultural and historic sites,” Boghigian said from Aleppo. Zarmig Boghigian, a journalist with the local Armenian newspaper “Gandzasar,” insisted that the rebels have deliberately fired on Armenian and other Christian churches since Sunday. “Nearby churches and many other structures have sustained even more damage. “The whole district has been subjected to shelling,” Reisian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) by phone. Zhirayr Reisian argued that Jdeydeh is very close to a scene of fierce fighting between the warring sides. “The evil must be stopped,” he wrote.Ī spokesman for the Aleppo diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church suggested that the rebels did not specifically target the city’s oldest Armenian worship site. Tigran Balayan, the spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Yerevan, commented on the “alarming reports” in a Twitter post. But others claimed that the destruction was caused artillery fire from rebel positions. Some sources said the church located in the city’s predominantly Christian Jdeydeh district was torn down by a powerful bomb placed underneath it. News reports from the northern Syrian city of Aleppo said the local 15th century Church of Forty Martyrs was targeted this week by rebel forces fighting government troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. Armenia’s Foreign Ministry deplored on Thursday the reported destruction of yet another Armenian church in Syria beset by a bloody civil war.