China: Abandoned children
Four children were found dead last week in southern China. The police said they had been living alone and killed themselves by ingesting pesticides. Their tragic deaths lay bare the tough ordeal facing a third of children in the Chinese countryside, forced to fend for themselves when their parents leave to work in the cities. The four brothers and sisters, aged between 5 and 13 years, had been fending for themselves for several years. Their mother had abandoned them and their father had left their home to work in a city 1,400 kilometres away. In a goodbye letter, the eldest wrote that he could no longer stand the pressure of looking after his brothers and sisters while studying at the same time, as his dad had wanted. Currently six million children have been left to fend for themselves - that’s one-third of China’s rural child population.
Syria: IS release elderly Christian hostage as Christians displaced in Aleppo
Four months after he was taken captive by IS fighters in north-eastern Syria, 70-year-old François Sawa was safely released and is in good health. Meanwhile In Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, Christian families are fleeing their homes after horrific fighting killed at least ten people, most of them children, and injured a further 150 . A few days later, two Armenian Christian men were killed in a mortar explosion in Aleppo. One was a visiting pastor from Armenia who had arrived only two days earlier. ‘All our congregation members are in agony,’ said Barnabas Fund’s partner on the ground in Syria, as he relayed the news. With fighting coming from four fronts, thousands of Christians have fled the city in terror. There are between 45,000 and 90,000 Christians living in Aleppo, down from 465,000 in 2010. IS forces have again attacked the north-eastern city of Hassake as well as the northern city of Kobane on 25 June.
Israel: Arson attack on Galilee church
A suspected arson attack on a church on the shores of the Sea of Galilee has left two people injured and caused serious damage. An elderly monk and a German volunteer needed hospital treatment for smoke inhalation after the attack on the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes in Tabgha village. There was minor damage to the main worship hall but other areas were badly affected. No one has been arrested in connection with the blaze, but sixteen Jewish ‘youths’ were taken in for questioning before being released. In April last year, young Jewish extremists desecrated crosses and an altar at the same church. Graffiti painted inside the church during the attack earlier this month read, ‘The false gods will be eliminated.’ The Galilee church was built in the 1980s on the site of ancient places of worship that commemorated the spot where Jesus fed 5,000 people with the loaves and fish.
Tunisia: Terror group had warned of shooting in tweet
A spokesman for the arm of IS in Tunisia, which has pledged allegiance to the main extremist IS group, had warned British and western tourists last month in a tweet not to go there for their summer holidays and that they were planning an attack. It said the warning was aimed at countries taking part in the coalition against IS in Iraq and Syria. ‘To the Christians planning their summer vacations in Tunisia, we can’t accept u in our land while your jets keep killing our Muslim Brothers in Iraq & Sham’, it said (Sham is the word usually translated as ‘the Levant’). ‘But if u insist on coming then beware because we are planning for u something that will make you forget #Bardoattack.’ The reference to the coalition is significant because one witness to the shootings said the attacker, Seifeddine Rezgui, told him to ‘get out of the way’ as he was looking for ‘British and French’. Britain and France have both joined the coalition against IS. See also: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/tunisia/11704849/Tunisia-attack-gunman-told-local-worker-Im-not-here-to-kill-you-as-he-tried-to-protect-British-tourists.html
