Barnabas, Mission Partners of Castle Street, Missions

Barnabas Update, April 4th 2018

Christians in hiding as Turkish forces seize Afrin

Barnabas Fund, 22 March 2018

Christians in Afrin in northern Syrian went into hiding on 18 March and villages were reportedly “cleared” of Christians and other religious minorities as Turkish armed forces and Syrian rebels seized control from Kurdish militia.

Jihadist militants fighting with Turkish armed forces are eliminating the presence of religious minorities and “consider Yazidis ‘infidels’, while announcing that if you kill Christians, you will go straight to paradise.”

“This horror is reminiscent of the initial actions of ISIS in Iraq … This situation foreshadows ethnic cleansing and genocide,” said Nadia Murad, a Yazidi genocide survivor.

Instead of protecting Christians, Kurdish militia have been known to conscript them to fight against the Turkish army.