Kidnapped Bishops Have Been Released

Archbishops Yohanna Ibrahim and Paul Yagizi have been released and returned to the city of Aleppo, Syria.

They were kidnapped while traveling between the Turkish border and Aleppo yesterday. They were on a humanitarian mission to ask for the release of previous kidnap victims. Their driver was killed.

Archbishop Ibrahim is head of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Aleppo. Archbishop Yaziji leads Aleppo’s Greek Orthodox Church.

From BBC News:

Two bishops who were abducted by gunmen in a rebel-held area of northern Syria have been released, a church official has said.

The pair have returned to the city of Aleppo, Greek Orthodox Bishop Tony Yazigi told Reuters.

The senior clerics, Yohanna Ibrahim and Boulos Yaziji, were seized on Monday as they were travelling from the Turkish border back to the city of Aleppo.

It was not immediately clear who had kidnapped them.

Bishop Ibrahim is the head of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Aleppo, while Bishop Yaziji leads the city’s Greek Orthodox Church.

They are the most senior Christian clerics caught up directly in the war.

Abductions on the rise

Kidnappings have increased dramatically in Syria in the past year but the abduction of such high-ranking Christian figures is unusual, the BBC’s James Reynolds reports from the city of Istanbul, in neighbouring Turkey.

Christians made up about 10% of the mainly Sunni Muslim country’s population before the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began just over two years ago. (Read more here.)