In keeping with recent practice of bombing the diplomatic facilities which oppose their struggle to overthrow the Syria government, the insurgents in Syria have hit the Vatican Embassy with a mortar shell today.
Targeting the Vatican embassy was likely no accident. As the US was on the verge of bombing Syria in late-August, the pope held a peace vigil at the Vatican attended by more than 100,000. As support for a US attack sagged among the American public and in Congress, this Vatican effort to head off a US war on behalf of the anti-Assad fighters was certainly of great significance. It may have been a deciding factor.
The US-backed insurgents have specifically targeted Christians and their churches, most recently targeting Christians in the town of Sadad for torture and slaughter. According to a report yesterday:
Inhabitants of Sadad, near Homs, who fled the largely Syrian Orthodox town when rebels attacked last month, are now returning home to discover the scale of atrocities, where 1,500 families were held hostage and 45 were killed, including two teenage boys, their mother and three of their grandparents who were thrown down a well.
The reports, sent by Church leaders to Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), describe how, in this ancient Christian town mentioned in the Bible (Ezekiel), vulnerable people unable to escape, including the elderly, disabled, women and children, were subjected to torture, such as strangulation.
Church sources say 30 bodies were found in two separate mass graves.
The embassy bombing today was accompanied by several other insurgent attacks on civilians and government officials today, including in government-held Sweida, where eight more were killed.
Will the US government and the Obama Administration condemn this attack? If so, will they blame it on just a few bad eggs as they have done countless times in the past?
