destroyed Archives

Syrian army says destroyed most of Israeli rockets

May 10, 2018 by administrator

The Syrian army command says its air defense systems have managed to intercept and destroy the biggest part of a “successive wave” of Israeli rockets fired at military bases in the Arab country.

The army spokesman said in a statement on state television on Thursday that the recent Israeli strikes had demolished a radar station and a weapons depot, without elaborating on the location of the targets.

The Israeli attacks on Syria also killed three people and wounded several others, according to the statement.

It further reaffirmed “the alertness of the army and readiness to defend the sovereignty of the homeland against any aggression,” stressing that attempts to support terrorism would prove futile.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that Israel had used 28 planes in its Syria strikes and fired 70 missiles, adding that Damascus had shot down over half of the missiles.

In the early hours of Thursday, Israel attacked dozens of targets inside Syria in what was said to be the most extensive strike in the Arab country in decades.

The Tel Aviv regime claimed that its assault was a response to a barrage of 20 rockets that were fired from Syria at Israeli military outposts in the occupied Golan Heights. It also blamed the rocket fire on Iran.

Syrians unmoved by Israeli strikes

A video released by Reuters later on Thursday showed Syrian people shopping in a Damascus neighborhood says that they were not afraid after the heaviest Israeli strikes on the country since the foreign-backed militancy started.

One Damascus resident said they had stood on a roof to watch Syrian air defenses shoot down Israeli missiles and celebrate “our army’s achievements,” while a retired army officer was quoted by Reuters as saying that Syria should always respond when attacked “no matter what it costs.”

Russia alarmed by Syria escalation

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said on Thursday that Moscow was “concerned” about the recent escalation in Syria in the wake of the Israeli strikes.

“We have established contacts with all parties and we call for restraint from all parties,” he said. “The current … exchange of rocket fire is dangerous, as it distracts from the fight against Daesh terrorists, hampers the political settlement of the situation in Syria.”

Over the past few years, Israel has frequently attacked military targets in Syria in what is considered as an attempt to prop up terrorist groups that have been suffering heavy defeats against Syrian government forces.

Israel has been providing weapons to anti-Damascus militants as well as medical treatment to the Takfiri elements wounded in Syria.

On the contrary, Iran has been offering advisory military assistance to the Syrian government fighting an all-out foreign-sponsored militancy.

Turkish military destroyed 6,320 buildings in five kurd southeastern provinces amid clashes

May 30, 2016 by administrator

Some 6,320 buildings in five southeastern provinces have been destroyed amid security operations in the region against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Deputy Prime Minister and government spokesman Numan Kurtulmuş has said, adding that the number corresponds to approximately 11,000 residential units.

Kurtulmuş mentioned five southeastern districts in his speech, namely the Sur district of Diyarbakır province, the Silopi, İdil and Cizre districts of Şırnak province and the Yüksekova district of Hakkari province.

“The number of buildings destroyed in the Sur, Silopi, Cizre, İdil and Yüksekova districts is 6,320. If we think of them in terms of flats, it’s approximately 11,000 units. The predicted cost to repair the buildings is around 855 million Turkish Liras,” Kurtulmuş told journalists at a press meeting after a cabinet meeting at Çankaya Mansion in the capital Ankara on May 30, citing a report by the Environment and Urbanization Ministry.

Meanwhile, a curfew that was imposed on March 13 in Yüksekova has been partially lifted, making way for local citizens who left the district to avoid clashes between PKK militants and Turkish security forces to go back.

Most of the residents migrated to the eastern province of Van after the curfew came into force and additional trips were organized by companies for the residents who wanted to go back to Yüksekova.

“I’m happy to go back to my house. I only took my suitcase when I was leaving. I’m going back with the same one,” said Sevi Aslan, who moved to Istanbul three months ago in order to escape the clashes.

“According to the information I received from the province, the doors of our house were broken, our clothes were burned and major destruction took place. We don’t accept this cruelty. We will continue to live in our province,” Aslan told Anadolu Agency on May 30.

Syria: A rocket destroyed a building in the compound of the Armenian maternity “Verjine Gulbenkian” Aleppo

May 27, 2016 by administrator

The “Arévélk” newspaper informs that the night of Wednesday to Thursday, mortar blasts fired at residential neighborhoods in Aleppo were recorded. Rockets fell on the Salah Al Din district, and Khaldiyé Nor Kiugh. On this Armenian quarter of Nor Kiugh (Hay Al Midan) an explosion caused significant damage in motherhood “Verjine Gulbenkian.” The rocket exploded on a house near the hospital for the elderly in the grounds of motherhood “Vergine Gulbenkian.” A building was destroyed. Nevertheless it seems that fortunately no casualties to report. “Arévélk” states that face the bombing, in agreement with the religious leaders of three Armenian churches of Aleppo, the elderly were transported in the buildings of the “Maternity Gulbenkian.”

Krikor Amirzayan

Armenian Christian Stone Cross Destroyed in Arizona

April 29, 2016 by administrator

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A stone cross in Scottsdale was destroyed by vandals.(Photo: 12 News)

SCOTTSDALE (12 News)—A stone cross being installed at the St. Apkar Armenian church in Scottsdale was destroyed by vandals.

Someone broke it into pieces and church officials told 12 News that they feel that it was specifically targeting them.

Artin Kandjian, the architect of the church, said, “It feels deliberate because it’s a terrible coincidence that this happened during the week of April 24th, which is a traditional commemoration of the Armenian genocide, which took place in 1915.”

Anyone with information relevant to this incident is asked to call the Scottsdale Police Department.

How the American Neoconservatives Destroyed Mankind’s Hopes for Peace

April 15, 2016 by administrator

By Paul Craig Roberts
Former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury in the Reagan administration

When Ronald Reagan turned his back on the neoconservatives, fired them, and had some of them prosecuted, his administration was free of their evil influence, and President Reagan negotiated the end of the Cold War with Soviet President Gorbachev.

The military/security complex, the CIA, and the neocons were very much against ending the Cold War as their budgets, power, and ideology were threatened by the prospect of peace between the two nuclear superpowers.

I know about this, because I was part of it. I helped Reagan create the economic base for bringing the threat of a new arms race to a failing Soviet economy in order to pressure the Soviets into agreement to end the Cold War, and I was appointed to a secret presidential committee with subpeona power over the CIA. The secret committee was authorized by President Reagan to evaluate the CIA’s claim that the Soviets would prevail in an arms race. The secret committee concluded that this was the CIA’s way of perpetuting the Cold War and the CIA’s importance.

The George H. W. Bush administration and its Secretary of State James Baker kept Reagan’s promises to Gorbachev and achieved the reunification of Germany with promises that NATO would not move one inch to the East.

The corrupt Clintons, for whom the accumulation of riches seems to be their main purpose in life, violated the assurances given by the United States that had ended the Cold War. The two puppet presidents-George W. Bush and Obama-who followed the Clintons lost control of the US government to the neocons, who promptly restarted the Cold War, believing in their hubris and arrogance that History has chosen the US to exercise hegemony over the world.

Thus was mankind’s chance for peace lost along with America’s leadership of the world. Under neocon influence, the United States government threw away its soft power and its ability to lead the world into a harmonious existance over which American influence would have prevailed.

Instead the neocons threatened the world with coercion and violence, attacking eight countries and fomenting “color revolutions” in former Soviet republics.

The consequence of this crazed insanity was to create an economic and military strategic alliance between Russia and China. Without the neocons’ arrogant policy, this alliance would not exist. It was a decade ago that I began writing about the strategic alliance between Russia and China that is a response to the neocon claim of US world hegemony.

The strategic alliance between Russia and China is militarily and economically too strong for Washington. China controls the production of the products of many of America’s leading corporations, such as Apple. China has the largest foreign exchange reserves in the world. China can, if the government wishes, cause a massive increase in the American money supply by dumping its trillions of dollars of US financial assets.

To prevent a collapse of US Treasury prices, the Federal Reserve would have to create trillions of new dollars in order to purchase the dumped financial instruments. The rest of the world would see another expansion of dollars without an expansion of real US output and become skepical of the US dollar. If the world abandoned the US dollar, the US government could no longer pay its bills.

Europe is dependent on Russian energy. Russia can cut off this energy. There are no alternatives in the short-run, and perhaps not in the long run. If Russia shuts off the energy, Germany industry shuts down. Europeans freeze to death in the winter. Despite these facts, the neocons have forced Europe to impose economic sanctions on Russia.

What if Russia responded in kind?

NATO, as US military authorities admit, has no chance of invading Russia or withstanding a Russian attack on NATO. NATO is a cover for Washington’s war crimes. It can provide no other service.

Thanks to the greed of US corporations that boosted their profits by offshoring their production to China, China is moderinized many decades before the neocons thought possible. China’s military forces are moderized with Russian weapons technology. New Chinese missiles make the vaunted US Navy and its aircraft carriers obsolete.

The neocons boast how they have surrounded Russia, but it is America that is surrounded by Russia and China, thanks to the incompetent leadership that the US has had beginning with the Clintons. Judging from Killary’s support in the current presidential primaries, many voters seem determined to perpetuate incompetent leadership.

Despite being surrounded, the neocons are pressing for war with Russia which means also with China. If Killary Clinton makes it to the White House, we could get the neocon’s war.

The neocons have flocked to the support of Killary. She is their person. Watch the feminized women of America put Killary in office. Keep in mind that Congress gave its power to start wars to the president.

The United States does not have a highly intelligent or well informed population. The US owes its 20th century dominance to World War I and World War II which destroyed more capable countries and peoples. America became a superpower because of the self-destruction of other countries.

Despite neocon denials that their hubris has created a powerful alliance against the US, a professor at the US Navy War College stresses the reality of the Russian-Chinese strategic alliance#mce_temp_url#.

Last August a joint Russian-Chinese sea and air exercise took place in the Sea of Japan, making it clear to America’s Japanese vassal that it was defenceless if Russia and China so decided.

The Russian defense minister Sergey Shoigu said that the joint exercise illustrates the partnership between the two powers and its stabilizing effect on that part of the world.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that Russian-Chinese relations are able to resist any international crises.

The only achievements of the American neoconservatives are to destroy in war crimes millions of peoples in eight countries and to send the remnant populations fleeing into Europe as refugees, thus undermining the American puppet governments there, and to set back the chances of world peace and American leadership by creating a powerful strategic alliance between Russia and China.

This boils down to extraordinary failure. It is time to hold the neoconservatives accountable, not elect another puppet for them to manipulate.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was professor of economics in several universities and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was a member of the US-USSR student exchange program in 1961, and addressed the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1989 and 1990. His first book, Alienation and the Soviet Economy, was published in 1971. His website is www.paulcraigroberts.org.

Source: sputniknews.com

Home destroyed by Azerbaijan but christianity survived, Karabakh family wants peace to return to native village

April 9, 2016 by administrator

By Gayane Mkrtchyan
ArmeniaNow reporter

Residents of a northeastern Karabakh village were awakened from their sleep on the night of April 2 to face a new reality: the dark sky was lit up by Azeri shells, which turned into a downpour within seconds causing vast devastation to the peaceful community.

“I did not feel very well that night. A sound from outside woke me up. I got up to take medicine for blood pressure. I opened the door to get a cup of water, and heard shots, sounds of explosion,” Safura Iskandaryan, a 52-year-old resident of the village of Talish in the NKR’s Martakert region, emotionally gives her account of the events.

“My husband also got up. We saw that they were shelling the village. They first struck the military unit, and our house is 300 meters away from it. The second strike was further down. Bomb fragments were landing in our garden. We hardly managed to dress my disabled mother and hide in the bathhouse, which we used as a bomb shelter.”

The woman says their family hid in “the temporary shelter” for four and a half hours. She remembers their house being hailed with shots and how they narrowly escaped. Later, she says at the front gate they met Armenian soldiers who ordered them to immediately leave the village.

“You cannot imagine how fast we got in our car, and took with us as many of the villagers as we could: most of them were children, my brother with his grandchild. We already knew that the Azeris were in the village, in the upper district. Those poor people, who were brutally murdered, were living in a house in the upper part. We took 30 people in our car and my husband drove to the village of Mataghis,” says a mother of four kids, repeatedly mixing sequence of events, because of her emotions.

The Iskandaryan family is one of many in Talish who experienced déjà vu on April 2, again feeling the pain and loss of the war on their own skin: they were displaced from their own houses for the second time in 23 years.

Recalling harrowing details of the night, the woman says that they got into a terrible bombardment in the village of Mataghis. They saw how the Mataghis power station was blown up by a Grad multiple rocket launcher system used by Azerbaijanis.

“It was like watching a movie. Children were crying and adults were screaming: ‘Edo jan, save us, drive forward, they are shooting.’ My poor husband was shouting: ‘I am not worrying about me, what shall I do with these children?…” We hid around a hill in our car, and when the enemy soldiers were busy with charging their guns, we were able to flee. We looked back at the houses for soldiers’ families and saw them collapsing like in a movie. We reached the village of Maghavuz, where gunshots were heard, too. Cars were rushing out of the village. Everyone was trying to save their families,” she says.

The Iskandaryans, together with other villagers, moved to Armenia, and got to their relatives’ homes.

The village of Talish, which is home to about 500 people, is one of the oldest villages of Artsakh. As a result of hostilities, most of the village, which is not far from the line of contact, was destroyed. The village’s administrative building, its school, kindergarten, and other infrastructures were bombed. Dozens of houses were leveled to the ground. It was on the night of April 2 that the rival soldiers shot dead two Talish civilians, Valera Khalapyan and his wife Razmelay, and cut their ears. They also killed 92-year-old Marusya Khalapyan.

Iskandaryan says that they robbed the houses of the village, took away computers, different electrical gadgets, the mobile phones of the villagers.

“There were people, who managed to escape just in pajamas. At such critical moments people just want to flee and save their life. The largest shop in the village was mine. Now my husband is there and says that they have taken everything. The villagers of Talish need help to be able to get back on their feet,” she says.

NKR Prime Minister Ara Harutyunyan, visiting the town of Martakert, and the villages of Mataghis and Talish on April 6, said that the government will do its utmost to help to quickly reconstruct the residents’ houses and community infrastructure damaged in the bombardment. The prime minister said that within a few days Ministry of Urban Development specialists will inventory all the damage in order to start the restoration work as soon as possible.

Iskandaryan says that farmers are constantly calling each other to ask whether they are going to return to the village or not.

“The answer is one: if the village is reconstructed, they will be happy to return. The village had been destroyed during the war, but during those 23 years we re-built Talish. The village guests used to say: ‘what a lovely and rich village it is’. We were accustomed to living under the shootings, but not like this. We were afraid of only commando raids that had become frequent, but not of shootings,” she says.

The villagers of Talish dream to return to their homes, to live, to create. Iskandaryan is worried: her daughter and husband plowed the land and they were going to start sowing maize in a few days.

“How can it be? We’re so happy with our soldiers. We knew that if they were there, then we were safe and could sleep tight. But now I cannot imagine that I can go there again, and go to bed peacefully. I do not believe that there is a ceasefire. One cannot trust an Azeri. Today, they say that everything is alright, but later they fire at you in the back. I will go and check myself how strong the positions are, and only then I will return to Talish. We want peace,” says Iskandaryan.

AGOS: Turkey Cultural inventory of a civilization destroyed revealed

March 14, 2016 by administrator

By Uygar Gültekin

Cultural Heritage Map of Turkey is created at the end of a months-long study and research. Thanks to the project of Hrant Dink Foundation, an interactive online map is created. Through this map, it is possible to list and examine the sanctuaries, schools, hospitals and cemeteries of Armenians, Greeks, Syriacs and Jews in Turkey.

This inventory is a unique source for understanding what we have lost along with the civilization. You should just visit the website: turkiyekulturvarliklari.com

Hrant Dink Foundation took the inventory of the structures like churches, synagogues, monasteries, schools, hospitals and cemeteries that were built by Greeks, Armenians, Syriacs and Jews. After working and researching for almost 2 years, around 10.000 structures are revealed. This inventory, which reveals the cultural heritage of people who had been living in Anatolia for centuries, is the most extensive work that has been made so far. The foundation made the data available to everyone by an interactive map.

The research started in 2014. The team of researchers consisting of Nora Mildanoğlu, Zakarya Mildanoğlu, Mustafa Batman, Ezgi Deniz Berk, Merve Kurt, Vahakn Keşişyan, Tuna Başıbek, Aleksandros Kamburis, Şahika Karatepe, Zeynep Oğuz and Norayr Olgar reviewed various sources. Along with the structures that still stand, they also listed the structures that were destroyed, burned down or not protected; the ones that are being used as storage or barn; and the ones that were transformed to a mosque. Turkish EU Ministry, Open Society and Chrest Foundation supported the project.

Project coordinator Merve Kurt and researchers Tuna Başıbek, Zeynep Oğuz, Aleksandros Kamburis and Vahakn Keşişyan told about the details of the project.

This is a first

Project coordinator Merve Kurt pointed out that this is the first project that reveals the cultural heritage of the Anatolian non-Muslims.

“We reviewed the primary and secondary sources. During the first year, we focused on the Armenian culture; and we focused on the heritage of Greeks, Jews and Syriacs during the second year. Church books were the most useful sources. We worked on the Ottoman Archives of the Prime Minister’s Office (Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi). We added every church or school mentioned in the sources to the inventory.”

Noting the difficulties in the process of research, Kurt said, “For Greek sources, we went to Centre for Asia Minor Studies in Greece and for Syriac sources, we went to Sweden. We got a lot of data from there. Names of the places were the most difficult part. We worked in accordance with the current provincial borders. We conducted another study on the old provincial borders in the archives. Comparing the old names with the new ones was difficult.”

Data is available to the public

Kurt emphasized that the map on the website is open to the contribution by everyone.

“That map is the visualized version of the project of Hrant Dink Foundation; an interactive map which shows the churches, hospitals, synagogues, schools, monasteries, orphanages and cemeteries belonging to Armenians, Greeks, Syriac and Jews. It makes easier to access the inventory. Photos, historical facts and their sources are shown on the map.”

There are a lot of structures that should be protected

Kurt pointed out that this is a project that can raise awareness and reveals the fact that there are a lot of structures that should be protected. “Though those structures are officially recorded, they are in ruins; treasure hunters are still doing excavation work in those places. There are preservation boards in every region, but in Kayseri, for instance, there 30-35 registered structures, whereas we listed 130. Some structures there are ignored. Our work is an important data for them.”

The project will continue

Stating that the project will continue for conducting the field study, Kurt spoke about what is to be done next: “We will check our data on the field. And there will be another field study. We will determine 3 regions. We will choose a school, a street and a church and conduct oral history study in those places. People’s story will be recorded. Also, locals will decide how they want to see those structures and we will share the result of this survey with the authorities.”

Sources

Researcher Vahakn Keşişyan told about the sources and methodology that they used during the inventory work.

“In the first stage, we formed the inventory by determining the main sources: the list of Armenian churches and monasteries that was prepared between 1912 and 1913 by the Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul to be submitted to the Ministry of Justice and Religion (Adliye ve Mezahib Nezareti), edited and published by Aram Khaçaduri Safradsyan, and translated from Armenian into Turkish by Zakarya Mildanoğlu; Raymond Kevorkian and Paul Paboudjian’s extensive work on Ottoman Armenians; archives of Agos Weekly Newspaper; and postcards from the Calumeno collection that were published by Osman Köker. We chose different main sources for every society. We started from those sources and began to review other sources for determining what is lacking. It was hard to find such extensive main sources for other societies. For Jewish heritage, we used Synagogues of Turkey, the extensive survey put together by Naim Avigdor Güleryüz in 2008; the detailed 2004 article by Süleyman Faruk Göncüoğlu about the synagogues in the Haliç neighborhood of Istanbul; various articles published in Şalom Weekly Newspaper; and İnci Türkoğlu’s 2001 dissertation on Synagogue Architecture in Turkey from Antiquity to Today. For Greeks, we couldn’t have found a main source, but there were various sources in different places. The largest source was Centre for Asia Minor Studies. They conducted oral history studies with the Greeks who were subjected to population exchange. There is a huge data and we worked on them. It was a hard work, since they are not digital; we had to read them all. For Syriacs, we used Gabriel Akyüz’s book on the churches and monasteries around Mardin; studies on the buildings in the Tur Abdin region by Getrude Bell in 1910 and Hans Hollerweger in 1999; and Elif Keser Kayaalp’s dissertation on the church architecture in Northern Mesopotamia. In addition to the cultural heritage of the 4 societies that we worked on, we found structures belonging to Georgians, Bulgarians and Levantines. However, we couldn’t add them to the inventory, since they are not in the scope of the project. But we have the data.”

Stating that they found way more structures than they were expecting, Keşişyan said: “When the second stage was started, there were 4000 structures that belong to Armenians and 2000 Greek structures. At the end of the study, there are 4000 Greek structures. We found almost 700 Syriac structures; at the beginning of our study in Kayseri, the number was 250. After the study on Kayseri, it reached to 350 and then to 400 when we went to the field. When you focus on a single place, the number increases.”

There is an interrupted period in history

Researcher Aleksandros Kamburis told about the study on Greek structures:

“Three institutions took part in our study: Patriarchate, consulate and Centre for Asia Minor Studies in Athens. We got the most of the data from there. The most important problem is the disappearance of the historical information. In İstanbul, it is not possible to find enough sources in Greek. Greeks took most of the archives and records with them, when they were going to Greece. We can find them in Centre for Asia Minor Studies. Minorities don’t have a common information or memory center. There was a library taken from Greek Literary Foundation. There were important researches. This library was taken away from the foundation and got lost. We lost really important historical information. In the studies, we can find realistic information until ‘20s; we don’t have any information about what happened after ‘20s. We cannot trace the churches and public buildings. When people came back, they found out that the churches are not there anymore and thus, the information gets lost.”

Changed names are the most important problem

Researcher Tuna Başıbek told about the details of the study conducted in the Ottoman Archives of the Prime Minister’s Office:

“There are two main sources in Ottoman archives. One of them is a book; we don’t know its exact date, but probably, it was kept in late 19. or in early 20. century. It contains sufficient information. Everything is listed meticulously in a technocratic way. The other one is the church books. There are 10 books and 7 of them are in the archive. They were sent to the center by the local clergy. The structures, their locations and reconstruction are recorded. They contain more detailed information. Names of the places are one of the most important problems. The officials who were keeping the books either didn’t know the names of the places or they misspelled them; or the names and the borders are changed. We are able to determine the churches, their locations, their congregations and their landlords. The records show their reconstruction dates; so, we don’t know when they were originally built.”

There is diversity in Jewish culture

Researcher Zeynep Oğuz spoke about the methodology of the study on Jewish public buildings:

“Language was a problem; so, we used secondary sources, but sometimes, the sources in Turkish are more useful concerning the information on Turkey. There are books by Naim Güleryüz which contain references to the structures that don’t exist anymore. We understood that Güleryüz’s work is the most extensive one. In fact, there are academic studies in English. Thanks to media organs like Agos and Bianet, we realized that sold houses and synagogues are not recorded in those studies. There are almost no retrospective sources. And we cannot say that there is continuity in the information. There are active synagogues in places like İskenderun and Hatay; this is an unexpected thing for me. There is diversity in Jewish culture. We know about the structures that belong to Ashkenazy and Sefardim, which are rather recent. However, there are older structures in Turkey.”

How to contribute?

Keşişyan said that everyone can contribute to the project through the interactive map: “First of all, this is an ongoing project that is open to suggestions and contributions. People can add photos and information and make changes in the current information. Everyone can send sources, photos and information they have. There is also an option for adding a new structure by which people can send photos and information about a structure that is not listed in our inventory. We will receive them as suggestions and keep them as data.”

Islamic State controlled Armenian church totally destroyed in Iraq

March 2, 2016 by administrator

The St Mary Armenian church of Sinjar (northern Iraq) has been totally destroyed by Islamic State (IS) militants who kept the sacred place under control.

Citing its sources from Erbil (capital of Iraqi Kurdistan), the local Armenian website Arevelk (East) reports that scores of skeletons thought to have belonged to residents of the region were recently found in the vicinities of the church.

The Armenian population of Sinjar left the province after the Islamic State’s invasion.

Sinjar is considered the main center of the Yezidi community of Iraq.

Syria: Turkish Supported Al-Nusra terrorist destroys churches, desecrates cemeteries in Latakia

February 2, 2016 by administrator

Al-Nusra Front has destroyed the churches of Syrian village of Ghnemye in Latakia’s north, Arevelk cited one of the residents as saying.

Upon returning to the town, the resident found his home demolished.

“The Armenian and Evangelical churches of the village have been completely destroyed, with cemeteries desecrated,” Arevelk said.

Anti-government protests developed into a civil war that four years on has grown to a stalemate, with the Assad government, Islamic State, an array of Syrian rebels and Kurdish fighters all holding territory.

More than 250,000 Syrians have been killed and a million injured. Some 11,5 million others have been forced from their homes, of whom four million have fled abroad – including growing numbers who are making the dangerous journey to Europe.

Iran, Russia and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement are propping up the Alawite-led Assad government, while Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar back the more moderate Sunni-dominated opposition, along with the U.S., UK and France. Hezbollah and Iran have pro-Assad forces on the ground, while a Western-led coalition and Russia are carrying out air strikes.

Iraq’s al-Maliki ‘Reaffirms’ Saudi Arabia Will Be Destroyed

January 2, 2016 by administrator

Iraqi political leader Nouri al-Maliki said that the execution of a Shia Cleric would topple Saudi Arabia’s rulers.

Iraq’s former prime minister and head of the Islamic Dawa Party Nouri al-Maliki condemned Saudi Arabia’s execution of Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, pledging that the act would bring down the Saudi rulers.

In his condemnation, al-Maliki himself used sectarian language, referring to the execution of Shiite cleric Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, founder of the Dawa Party. Al-Sadr was executed by Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated government in 1980, five months before the beginning of the notoriously destructive Iran-Iraq War.

“As we condemn this disgusting terrorist act and these detestable sectarian practices, we reaffirm that the crime of executing Sheikh al-Nimr will topple the Saudi regime, just as the crime of executing the martyr al-Sadr toppled the Saddam regime,” al-Maliki said.

As Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, the toppling of its rulers as suggested by al-Maliki would also mean the destruction of the Kingdom in its present state.

Al-Maliki currently holds several positions in Iraq’s divided government, including a Vice Presidency. Much of the military power is shared between the military and Shiite militias. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq led to a Shiite domination Iraq’s politics and a two-year sectarian civil war with the Sunni faction amid a larger anti-US insurgency.

Iraq’s military and militias recently forced ISIL (Daesh) out of the key town of Ramadi in the country’s west.

Daesh is a terrorist group affiliated with Wahhabism, a radical branch of Sunni Islam which originated from an alliance between cleric Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and village chief Muhammad bin Saud in the 18th century. The alliance led to the creation of the Emirate of Diriyah, the predecessor of Saudi Arabia, and the founding of the al-Saud dynasty.