ICC Note: Within the context of the nearly five-year-old war in Syria, much of the country’s Christian heritage is being destroyed. Christianity has been present in Syria for nearly 2,000 years. Now many of these ancient sites have been or will be destroyed. Hundreds of fighters are attempting to defend the Christian city of Sadad which has been the latest city under siege by Islamic jihadist fighters.

11/10/2015 Syria (Newsweek) – Hundreds of Christian fighters from across Syria have arrived in the majority-Syriac Christian town of Sadad to prevent it falling into the hands of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), the head of the Syriac Orthodox church says.
Sadad, which lies just off a vital highway connecting the cities of Damascus and Homs in the west of the country, has faced an onslaught from the radical group’s militants since October 31 as ISIS advances across central Syria and inches closer to the capital.
Some 500 Syriac Christian fighters have as yet prevented the group from entering the Sadad. But ISIS’s capture of the town of Mahin, less than five miles away, at the end of October has left Sadad vulnerable to a continued assault by the militants.

Last Thursday, Mor Ignatius Aphrem Karim II, the Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox church, traveled to Sadad from the church’s headquarters in Damascus in a bid to boost the morale of the fighters in the town. Following the ISIS assault last month, at least 200 Syriac fighters from Damascus, Qamishli and Hasakah traveled to Sadad to join the fight to defend the town, he told Newsweek by phone from the Syrian capital’s Old City.
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