Moscow, October 23, 2013
In the morning on October 22, units of the Jabhat Al-Nusra armed group attacked the village of Sadad, situated to the south-east of the city of Homs, earlier badly damaged by war , reports the Salam1 portal with the reference to the Siriyskaya Pravda ("Syrian truth") agency's materials.
According to the portal's information, the terrorists took over the control of major infrastructure objects of Sadad, such as a first-aid post, the head post office building and a local police station. As a result of firing three village residents, who had refused to fulfill a requirement of the militants to stay inside their houses, were killed.
The eyewitnesses of the events have told a spokesman of Siriyskaya pravda that the Jabhat Al-Nusra extremists, Giish and Kata'ib al-Farouq, who had actively taken part in seizure of Ma'loula last month, attacked the town from three directions by units with the overall strength of 2000 people.
Main government institutions were the first to suffer the acts of vandalism, and several civil servants became their victims.
The portal notes that the evacuation efforts have taken place since the seizure of the village. Thus, the village residents (the total number is around 10 000 – 30 000 people) have been gathering closer to the "Homs-Damascus" motorway of international importance, which is situated in 15 kilometres away from the settlement itself.
The actions of the radical groups' members make the local residents especially wary. The witnesses say that the militants searched for the residence of the retired colonel, a hero of republic, a participant of the military operations of 1970, 70-year-old Matanius Kariakos Kassis, in order to kidnap or kill the officer.
Moreover, Siriyskaya Pravda, referring to its own sources in London, reports prohibition by the English intelligence services to the "Syrian Observatory For Human Rights" organization, sponsored by the UK government, to refer to Sadad as a Christian village, "to prevent pressure of the public opinion to the Syrian opposition".
It should be reminded that the village of Sadad is a monument of world culture of exclusive importance, whose history goes back as far as the second millennium B.C. Thus, the settlement is more than once mentioned in the Bible (Num. 34:8, Ezekiel 47:15), and its land was the last refuge of the great Arab poet Abu Firas al-Hamdani.
