Ukraine’s giant seed bank at risk of being lost as war rages
London, UKReuters In underground vaults near Ukraine’s battlefields, the genetic code for nearly 2,000 crops is in danger of being permanently destroyed. The risk came into sharp focus earlier this month when a research facility near Ukraine’s national seed bank was damaged, according to Crop Trust, a non-profit organisation set up by the United Nations […]
Syrian forces consolidate control of Aleppo, air strikes under way
Beirut/Amman, JordanReuters The Syrian army said on Monday it had taken full control of dozens of towns in Aleppo’s northwestern countryside and it would press on with its campaign to wipe out militant groups “wherever they are found”. The advances were made after President Bashar al-Assad’s forces drove insurgents from the M5 highway linking Aleppo […]
London doctor awarded for helping Syria’s ‘burnt-out heroes’ in hell
London, UKThomson Reuters Foundation When a children’s hospital in Aleppo was decimated in 2016 after multiple bombings, British-Syrian doctor Rola Hallam decided to turn her grief into action. Within weeks the London consultant anaesthetist was on the way to the Syrian border with enough equipment to build the world’s first crowdfunded hospital. “Thousands of people […]
Refugees find their feet through football in Ireland
Dublin, IrelandThomson Reuters Foundation As Fadi hits a penalty shot into the back of the net, it is hard to believe that just a few years ago the Syrian teenager thought his footballing days were over when a house collapsed on him in an accident in his native Aleppo. The young refugee, who suffered a […]
Church body calls for release of Syrian bishops abducted five years ago
World Watch Monitor The World Council of Churches has called for the release of two Syrian archbishops kidnapped five years ago. “The Central Committee recalls with heavy hearts the abduction five years ago of the archbishops of Aleppo, Yohanna Ibrahim and Paul Yazigi,” the WCC said in a statement following a six-day meeting last week. “We […]
MIDDLE EAST: 70,000 SYRIAN ARMENIANS HAVE FLED DURING THE WAR, AND FEW WILL RETURN
ZARA SARVARIAN, in an article first published by World Watch Monitor, reports on how many of Syria’s Armenian community have left the country for Armenia following the conflict there while others have remained…
Report highlights “brutality against Christian clerics” in Syria, with five still missing
World Watch Monitor A report about violence against Syrian church leaders during the ongoing civil war shows that clerics have been beaten, abducted – five are still missing – and killed, and that 2013 was the worst year. In The Good Shepherd: A Report on Brutality against Christian Clerics in Syria March 25, 2011 – present’, […]
Five years on, hope remains for missing Syrian bishops
World Watch Monitor Five years since the disappearance of two Syrian bishops, the Syriac Orthodox Archdiocese of Beirut says “all available evidence and indications encourage continued optimism” that they may yet be alive and one day released. However, its statement added that “all the efforts that have been made to obtain even a single thread in this […]
SYRIA: ALEPPO BEGINS LONG ROAD TO RECOVERY
Writing for the World Watch Monitor, an unnamed worker with Christian charity Open Doors reports that the rebuilding of shattered, impoverished lives has been a slow process in Syria’s second city, but that it has presented the churches there with opportunities…
Syrian girl, who tweeted from Aleppo, documents horrors in new memoir
Thomson Reuters Foundation A Syrian girl, whose tweets from war-torn Aleppo captured a worldwide audience, has written a harrowing memoir of life under siege, recalling her terror of daily bombardments and her sorrow at being kept out of class. In Dear World, to be published on Tuesday, eight-year-old Bana Alabed, who now lives in Turkey, […]