Foreign- backed militants continue to attack the monastery in Sednaya in Syria.
In October Christians erected a towering Christ statue at the Cherubim Monastery in the community of Saidnaya, Syria.
The statue is taller than the Christ in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The statue can be seen from Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel.
The height of the bronze statue is 39 m together with the plinth, which is taller than the statue of the Christ in Rio de Janeiro (38 m). One can see the sculpture from Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. (Public Radio of Armenia)
Islamists bombed the town and monastery in December.
According to Iranian Press TV, the monastery continues to come under attack by rebel forces in Syria.
Meanwhile, Al-Qaeda terrorists are imposing strict Sharia law in the northern province of Raqqa.
Reuters reported:
A group linked to al Qaeda, emboldened by its recent victory over rival rebels in Syria, has imposed sweeping restrictions on personal freedoms in the northern province of Raqqa as it seeks to consolidate control over the region.
Reuters obtained copies of four statements issued on Sunday by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) prohibiting music from being played in public and photographs of people being posted in shop windows.
The sale of cigarettes and shisha water pipes are banned, women must wear the niqab, or full face veil, in public and men are obliged to attend Friday prayers at a mosque.
The directives, which cite Koranic verses and Islamic teaching, are the latest evidence of ISIL’s ambition to establish a Syrian state founded on radical Islamist principles.
ISIL is widely considered the most radical of the rebel groups fighting forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, and increasingly each other, in Syria’s civil war.
The first and only city to have fallen completely under rebel control, Raqqa has been held up by many ordinary Syrians as an example of what Syria might look like in a post-Assad era.
The anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group with sources across the country, said ISIL was turning its attention to setting up such a state after repelling an offensive earlier this month by rival Islamists and more moderate rebels.
