Syria Needs Our Prayers....

• "Turkish forces launched a bombing campaign across northeastern Syria on Wednesday, targeting civilian areas and killing Syriac Christians. The bombing campaign, launched less than 48 hours after a phone call between President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, appeared to target Christian and Kurdish enclaves in the cities of Qameshli, Kobani and others....The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) issued a statement calling for a halt to Turkish airstrikes. Civilians 'who represent a diverse group of religious and ethnic communities, are now at dangerous risk of falling victim to violent chaos,' said chairman Tony Perkins....On Oct. 8, Genocide Watch renewed a 2018 genocide warning for northeast Syria, saying, 'Kurds, Christians, and Yezidis in Northeast Syria are at grave risk of genocide by the armies of Turkey and Syria'" (Baptist Press, 10/11/19) 
• "Warnings that the fresh violence in north-east Syria could unleash a renewed – and potentially fatal – exodus of Christians from the region have come from a bishop who has accused the US and the international community of inflicting huge damage on the country. Archbishop Jacques Behnan Hindo said he feared a massive exodus of Christians in Hassaké – where half of Catholics and Orthodox have left since 2010 – as well as Qamishli, in north-east Syria.” (Zenit, 10/11/19) 
• "'Christians and others are extremely worried,' Syriac Christian political leader Bassam Ishak told Catholic News Service by phone Oct. 9. 'The Turkish bombing seems designed to push people out of their towns, if, in fact, they manage to escape alive'....An Islamist newspaper, Yeni Akit, which supports Erdogan's ruling party, posted a warning ahead of the invasion, 'Go and tell the unbelievers that the army of (Islam's Prophet) Muhammad is back,' essentially declaring religious war by Turkey" (Catholic News Service, 10/9/19). 

Syria needs our prayers but presently seems absent from the news sites of the Vatican and the USCCB