The following is an account of the battle ISIS is waging to control Sadad, which lies, 60 kilometres (37 mi) south of Homs, and 101 kilometres (63 mi) northeast of Damascus. One of the oldest areas of Christianity.
Even tho we have the combined airpower of the US/Allies and Russia/Syria/ ostensibly going after ISIS across both Iraq and Syria, they are still conducting offensive operations in many places. This tells me that they are not sufficiently degraded to warrant staying on the defense and only conducting limited ops. They will not be so easily rooted out.
The evidence further points to the belief that the US and its allies have been more concerned with regime change in Syria than with the actual plight of the common man there. It mirrors what transpired in Libya only this time, the strongman has the backing of Russia/Iran.
As Christians please continue to pray for your brothers and sisters overseas who are being persecuted daily, and face true evil head on and unafraid.
Hundreds of Christian fighters from across Syria have arrived in the majority-Syriac Christian town of Sadad to prevent it falling into the hands of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), the head of the Syriac Orthodox church says.
Sadad, which lies just off a vital highway connecting the cities of Damascus and Homs in the west of the country, has faced an onslaught from the radical group’s militants since October 31 as ISIS advances across central Syria and inches closer to the capital.
Last Thursday, Mor Ignatius Aphrem Karim II, the Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox church, traveled to Sadad from the church’s headquarters in Damascus in a bid to boost the morale of the fighters in the town. Following the ISIS assault last month, at least 200 Syriac fighters from Damascus, Qamishli and Hasakah traveled to Sadad to join the fight to defend the town, he told Newsweek by phone from the Syrian capital’s Old City.
Some 500 Syriac Christian fighters have so far prevented ISIS from entering the Sadad, he said. But ISIS’s capture of the town of Mahin, less than five miles away, at the end of October has left Sadad vulnerable to a continued assault by the militants.
“It is under assault,” Karim says. “IS advanced toward Sadad but they were not able to enter Sadad. The young people in Sadad, with the help of some armed groups, were able to fight back and push IS back to where they started. They are helped by some groups coming from different parts of Syria also.”
Syriac Christianity is one of the world’s oldest sects. It is an umbrella for a number of the churches of Eastern Christianity, such as the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Ancient Church of the East, the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Syriac Catholic Church. Its followers speak the ancient language of Aramaic, the tongue that Jesus is believed to have spoken.
Sadad has come under attack before. In October 2013, the Al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front militant group, which is battling the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, captured the town and held it for just over a week, killing 46 Syriacs before the Syrian army retook the town.
Source – read the rest here Sadad vs ISIS