Damascus -- Syria said Thursday a suicide bomber who killed a security forces member in Aleppo on New Year's Eve was in the Islamic State group, which planned attacks on churches and gatherings. ISIS recently increased its attacks in areas of Syria controlled by the Damascus authorities, and was blamed for an attack last month in Palmyra that killed three Americans.
The Chaldean patriarch, Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako, has received threats from Islamic groups based in Iraq and Iran following a misinterpretation of a message delivered during the Christmas Mass, according to Chaldean Press. During the liturgical celebration, the patriarch used the term "normalization" in a spiritual sense, exhorting the faithful to reconcile and live in peace with one another.
For more than a century and a half, Eastern Christian peoples, particularly the Assyrians, have endured massacres, displacement, and structural statelessness. At the same time, their ecclesiastical institutions have survived.
Baghdad -- Iraq's new Parliament convened this week for the first time since the November elections, opening its sixth legislative term with the familiar rituals of state: verses from the Quran, constitutional citations, and solemn oaths sworn in Arabic and Kurdish.
Baghdede, Iraq -- Nineveh Governor Abdul Qader al-Dakhil inaugurated the "Monument of Immortality" last night, Ishtar TV reports. The monument commemorates the victims of the tragic wedding hall fire in Baghdede in 2023. The monument was erected in the courtyard of the Syriac Catholic Archdiocese of Mosul in Baghdede, in the presence of a number of officials and religious and civil society figures.
Mugla, Turkey -- A silver necklace featuring a lion figure and an eight-pointed star, believed to represent the Assyrian goddess Ishtar, has been unearthed during excavations at the ancient city of Amos in Mugla, southwestern Turkey.