ICC Note:

Palmyra, a city in the middle of Syria, used to house 75,000 people and iconic structures like the 2,000 year-old Arch of Triumph. Now, it’s a ghost town thanks to ISIS’s initial capture, loss, and recapture of Palmyra over the course of several years. Ruins replace homes, silence replaces the bustling, and soldiers with guns replace families. Palmyra’s situation is not new in the Middle East. Continue to pray for families who have been displaced and are trying to return home.

3/26/2017 Egypt (BBC) – Fariha remembers the exact moment when Islamic State fighters shattered her life in Palmyra.

“It was a quarter to five in the morning. We were asleep and heard a knock on the door,” she tells me as we sit on thin, grey mattresses in an abandoned school in Homs, 160km (99 miles) from her home.

This makeshift shelter, in the ruins of a Homs neighbourhood, is a refuge for her and five children, as well as 29 other families, who fled the brutal rule of so-called Islamic State (IS).

“They shouted at me to cover myself then entered my house, weapons in hand, and took away my husband and niece,” she recalls as her little ones huddle close, listening, wide-eyed and silent.

Her 15-year-old nephew and her brother-in-law were also taken at that fateful time when IS first stormed Palmyra in 2015. They had their throats cut.

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