Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Homs (Agenzia Fides) - "Today we heard the bombings of the army, but no one is walking in the streets and the situation in the city seems calm. We await their arrival". The words of Archbishop Jacques Mourad, Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Homs, describe the climate of waiting and suspense experienced by the inhabitants of the neighborhoods of Homs. Waiting, the anti-government militias who continue their relentless advance and are now targeting Damascus. "In Homs, there is a slowdown - explains the Archbishop originally from Aleppo - only because there are still members of the government army in the city waiting for the order to withdraw. That is why the others have not entered, but are all around, and here the game is already over, thank God".
Jacques Mourad has been the Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Homs since March 2023. A monk of the Deir Mar Musa community, founded by the Roman Jesuit Paolo Dall'Oglio (who disappeared on July 29, 2013 while he was in Raqqa, then the Syrian capital of the so-called Islamic State), Father Jacques was kidnapped by a commando of jihadists in May 2015 and endured long months of captivity, first in isolation, then with more than 150 Christians from Quaryatayn, also taken hostage in the territories then conquered by Daesh, and who, like him, had signed the "protection contract" with the jihadist militiamen of the Islamic State.
"Now we are serene and we trust in the Lord. We hope to be able to celebrate the next feast of Jesus' Christmas in complete freedom. While waiting for the Nativity of Jesus, we dream that there can be a new birth for Syria too, for the present and for the future. A Syria respected by the international community and where living conditions can improve. For now, this seems to be a dream. But for us, it remains a very concrete expectation."
Syria, claims the online media Anbamed, seems to be "in a process of territorial disintegration. The advance from the north of the jihadists supported by Turkey and other NATO countries continues." Furthermore, "Daraa and Sueidaa, in the south, are beyond the control of the regime. The opposition groups have ordered local government forces to surrender and go over to the side of the uprising. The opposition in these two southern cities is not of the same jihadist matrix as Tahrir Sham.
Daraa was the rebel city in 2011 that triggered the March 25 uprising. Sueidaa, on the other hand, is a city with a Druze majority and has never participated in the uprising movement.
In the northeast, a region under the control of the Kurdish-led military forces, "the fighters have taken control of all the positions that were previously under the control of government forces and allied Iranian militias". On the Syrian scene, it is military forces and garrisons - including those of the United States, Russia and Iran - that would end up clashing in a possible dissolution of the apparatuses of President Bashar al Assad. (GV) (Agenzia Fides, 7/12/2024)
