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URGENT: SYRIA: Help Aleppo's Christians, victims of sustained bombardment on the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide
100+ killed, hundreds more injured or homeless
PHOTO: A photo taken with a mobile phone during the rocket and mortar attacks on a Christian area of Aleppo
The Barnabas Fund
April 29, 2016
Will you help the Christians of Aleppo, after a fearsome 5-day onslaught of rockets and mortars falling on their neighbourhoods? Our contact reported 1200 rockets and mortars fired into the city on Monday 25 April alone, more than half falling on the Christian community. There are now estimated to be over 100 dead and far more injured by the blasts. Most of the casualties are Christians, many of them children or elderly.
Barnabas Fund has already sent £80,000 (€100,000; $110,000) to help with medical treatment for the injured, food and shelter for the newly homeless, and funeral costs such as coffins. But more is needed. Please help us to keep helping them. The rebel forces carrying out this sustained campaign had issued a direct threat against Aleppo's large community of Armenian Christians on 22 April, warning, "We will show the Armenians and the Christians who we are ... We have been ordered not to leave any Armenians in the area."
From Friday until Tuesday the attack continued. One Christian eyewitness said to Barnabas Fund on Sunday, "Mortars and rockets are like rain."
Yet the media have been silent.
Aleppo has a large population of Armenians, whose Christian faith is essential to their identity, as well as Arab Christians. The Armenians are descendants of those who fled to safety from the Armenian and Assyrian Genocide, which peaked in 1915. In that year, on 24 April, many of their leaders and intellectuals were massacred and so that day is when the Armenian community commemorates the Genocide each year. Christians in Aleppo see this renewal of violence, coming as it does eight weeks into the faltering peace process, as specifically timed to coincide with this special day; the threat from the rebels seems to confirm this view. Over the past year, Barnabas has sent emergency aid to help after major attacks on Christians in towns and cities in Syria including Hassake, Qaryatain, Haffar and Saddad.
A forlorn child, pictured amid the destruction caused by the current sustained rocket and mortar attacks
Give today:
If you would like to help Christian victims of these devastating attacks on Aleppo, please send a donation to our Middle East Fund to help Christians in Syria (00-1032).
Donate https://barnabasfund.org/donate?appeal=SAB%204/16&project=00-1032
Telephone
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