Syria Church leaders have denounced a double-headed suicide attack on Christian-owned restaurants in Qamishli, Syria, that left 20 people dead and more than 40 injured.
“It was a sinister message the terrorists wanted to send to the Christians of this city, sowing death and tears,” Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan said, describing the massacre, for which ISIS has claimed responsibility, as part of “a message of horror” that Syria’s Christians had been hearing for the past five years.
Prior to the outbreak of war in Syria in 2011, there were about 40,000 Christians in Qamishli, but the Beirut-based patriarch said “now they surely are less than half”, adding, “now, after this massacre, our fear is that the emigration of Christians will go further and in larger numbers”.
Similarly, the patriarch said, whereas there had previously been about 35,000 Christians in his hometown of Hassakeh, 84km from Qamishli, he believes that only half that number live there now, and that there would have been even fewer had hundreds of Christian families not fled from the countryside to the cities.
“It is really frightening development,” he said, adding that, “The young generation seem to have no more hope in the future.”
Patriarch Younan’s sentiments were echoed by Qamishli-born Syrian Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II, who issued a statement condemning the attack, saying, “The old people weep, the young are losing hope and the children’s joy is wiped away.”
Claiming that “the enemy of humanity is spreading its power everywhere in our beloved Middle East”, the patriarch asked “what god do these suicide bombers worship?”
In a call for help, he appealed: “Where are the people of good conscience to act against these attacks? Is it not time to wake up from their deep sleep and to do all that is possible to protect the remaining people in this region, whose sole concern is to live in peace in their homeland? Is it not the fit time to unite and collectively fight all forms of terrorism and extremism?”
Thirteen of the 20 dead were Christians. Their funerals were celebrated through an ecumenical ceremony concelebrated by Damascus and Hassakeh’s Syriac Catholic Archbishops Gregorios Elias Tabe and Jacque Behnan Hindo, a Syriac Orthodox bishop and several Armenian Catholic and Orthodox clergy.
Patriarch Younan said that the ecumenical celebration was “a witness of communion that Christians of the Middle East continue to give, living ‘the ecumenism of blood’ as Pope Francis has repeatedly said”.