Globe Trot: Ceasefire brings no relief to Syria's persecuted Christians

SYRIA: Reports from a town near the city of Hama indicate ISIS brutally killed all the Christians and Alawites living there, an unspecified number who made up the town’s population, raping women first.

A Christian physician in Aleppo who has long supported the work of feeding and providing treatment for Christians and Muslims, told Barnabas Fund that Christians have remained under systematic attack despite the alleged ceasefire in force for several weeks: “We are melting like a candle.”

From my interview this week with National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez: “[Aleppo bombings] are emblematic of the upside-down nature of this conflict: Ambulances carry ammunition rather than patients, hospitals are targets rather than havens, churches have become brothels and slave-holding cells, and the United States—long the defender of human rights—is silent.”

NIGERIA: Multinational forces combating Boko Haram’s insurgency have arrested five of the group’s leaders and freed several women and children, according to Cameroonian officials.

Nigeria’s army claims it has rescued a second Chibok schoolgirl, two days after rescuing Amina Ali Nkeki, the first of 219 kidnapped girls to be found alive.

“Please Mum, take it easy. Relax. I never thought I would ever see you again, wipe your tears. God has made it possible for us to see each other again,” Amina, now 19, told her mom upon their reunion. Kidnapped in 2014 by Boko Haram, along with 275 other mostly Christian schoolgirls, Amina said six of the 217 remaining captives have died. Since the girls’ kidnapping, 18 of their parents also have died, including Amina’s own father, due to stress. After her uncle, also father to an abducted girl, heard Amina’s story of her ordeal, he asked her not to repeat it to other parents.

MAURITANIA: It’s good to know that someone, somewhere, is being prosecuted for slavery.

EGYPT: Searchers are beginning to find off the Greek coast the remains of EgyptAir Flight 804—seats, suitcases, and body parts—which is believed to have crashed early Thursday into the Mediterranean Sea while flying from Paris to Cairo. Sixty-six people were on board.

Baltimore pastor Paul Warren shared this video of his son’s U.S. Navy P-3 landing after an all-day search yesterday for the downed plane. “I am extremely proud of him and grateful that his work right now is mostly geared toward trying to save lives,” Warren wrote on Facebook.