Islamic State claims responsibility for murder of Armenian priest

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Islamic State group (IS) on Monday, November 11 claimed responsibility for the murder of an Armenian Catholic Priest and his father in the northeast Syrian province of Deir ez-Zor, just hours after the shooting took place, Rudaw reports.

IS claimed Monday afternoon via its Telegram channels to have killed “two Christian priests” in al-Zir village, in the al-Busayrah sub-district of Deir ez-Zor.

Syrian state TV SANA reported the “martyrdom” of Priest Housib Abraham Bidoyan, head of the Armenian Catholic Church in Qamishli, and his father. The two were killed by unidentified gunmen, SANA said, as they travelled southbound from Hasaka province to Deir ez-Zor.

The priest and his father had been on their way to “supervise the restoration” of a church when they were killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based war monitor.

The Armenian community in Syria, whose current numbers are unknown, are the survivors of the Ottoman Genocide of the Armenians in the early twentieth century. Driven into Syria by the death marches, many eventually ended up settling in the country.