Ani Zeytountsian
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has pledged to restore the Armenian Church in Der ez-Zor. The reconstruction is expected to start in the near future, the President said at a meeting with representatives of the local Armenian community and visiting Armenian entrepreneurs in December.
“The President has promised to keep the issue in the focus,” Syrian-Armenian businessman Sarkis Kazanjian told Public Radio of Armenia.
The Forty Martyrs Cathedral of Aleppo was earlier restored under the auspices of President,he said.
The Armenian Genocide Memorial Church in Der ez-Zor was destroyed by Islamic State terrorists in September 2014.
The Church was liberated by the Syrian Arab Army in November 2016 years after occupation by Islamic State forces.
The Church was built in at the site where there were the remains of countless Armenian Genocide victims who arrived in the area as the last stop of the mass deportation of Armenians, orchestrated by Ottoman Turkey in 1915.
The Armenian Genocide Memorial Church was erected on the site, to serve as a reminder to future generations of this black page of Ottoman Turkish history.