Priest 'kidnapped in Homs' region of Syria

A priest of the Syriac Catholic Church in the western Syrian city of Homs was kidnapped Thursday along with one of his colleagues, the NGO l'Oeuvre d'Orient told AFP Friday.

Father Jacques Mourad was seized with another Christian originating from Aleppo, who was helping the priest.

"The priest was kidnapped by three masked people in the early afternoon at his Mar Elian Monastery in the town of Qaryatayn, while he was preparing to welcome an expected influx of refugees from Palmyra," said the NGO, referring to the central Syrian city which was recently captured by the Daesh group.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed that "two men, at least one of them a priest," were kidnapped by armed men "near Qaryatayn, in the Homs province".

"After the fall of Palmyra, a lot of civilians started moving towards Qaryatayn, the small city 30 km (19 miles) from Homs, and especially the Mar Elian monastery," Father Ziad Hilal of Homs told l'Oeuvre d'Orient.

According to Father Kamil Semaan, of the Syriac Catholic Patriarchy in Beirut, armed men stormed the monastery in the early afternoon. Others present tried to intervene, but the gunmen took Mourad and his colleague in the priest's car, Semaan told AFP.

Several hours before being taken, Mourad had refused to leave the monastery, despite the threat of the Islamic State group in the region. "As the priest and pastor, I will never leave this place so long as there are people here, unless they hunt me down," said the priest.

Mourad had been at the monastery for the last 15 years. He succeeded the Italian Jesuit Priest Paolo Dall'Oglio as the head of the Mar Moussa Monastery, which is linked to Mar Elian, after Dall'Oglio was kidnapped in 2013 from the northern Aleppo province.   

The NGO said that Mourad worked to foster inter-religious dialogue, and worked with both Christians and Muslims.
Source: AFP