MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By Steve Gutterman, Reuters – “Russian security forces in a restive North Caucasus province on Sunday killed three militants suspected of planning attacks on church services during the Russian Orthodox Christmas holiday, authorities said.

Security forces tried to stop a van in the Kabardino-Balkaria province on Sunday but its occupants opened fire and were killed in the ensuing battle, during which the vehicle caught fire, the National Anti-Terrorism Committee said in a statement.

It said that explosives, guns and ammunition were found in the van and that the men who were killed had been planning attacks on churches during services marking Russian Orthodox Christmas, which is on Monday.

The statement gave no evidence to support that suspicion and the account could not be verified.

Deadly exchanges of gunfire between police and suspected militants at road checkpoints are common in Russia’s North Caucasus, a string of provinces hit by an Islamist insurgency rooted in two separatist wars in Chechnya.

Kabardino-Balkaria, west of Chechnya, is mostly Muslim but has a sizable Christian minority.” Read more.

Flashback: Russia: Prominent Muslim Lawyer Promises To ‘Cover Russia In Blood’ and Turn Moscow Into ‘A Second Dead Sea’ If Sharia Law Is Not Implemented – “Police in the Russian capital said on Wednesday they will examine a video in which a prominent Muslim lawyer pledges to ‘cover Russia in blood’ if the authorities refuse to establish courts to implement Islamic law. ‘May be you are foreigners here, and this is our home. We will set our rules, whether you want this or not … Any attempts to stop this will result in blood. We will turn the city (Moscow) into a second dead sea,’ he was quoted as saying.” Read more.

Flashback: Russia: Convert To Islam Calls For Killing Of All Non-Muslims To Unite The Muslim World Under A ‘Global Islamic Caliphate’ – “The Moscow City Court has sentenced radical Islamist Tatyana Tarasova to 1.5 years of probation for posting an article promoting terrorism on a Muslim advocacy website that she administered… Tarasova converted to Islam and began supporting radical Islamic views and the idea of committing terrorist acts against non-Muslims in an effort to unite the Muslim world under a ‘global Islamic caliphate.’” Read more.

AsiaNews – “Police in Mosul found the body of a Christian woman with her throat cut. The gruesome discovery was made today in an area where attacks have been perpetrated in the past against members of the city’s Christian minority, some, like abducted Bishop Faraj Rahho and Fr Ragheed Ganni, murdered.

Sources told AsiaNews that the victim is Shdha Elias, a 54-year-old Chaldean, who worked as a teacher ‘in a school in the al Bath neighbourhood.’ She ‘lived however in Bar Nirgal, near the university’. With her death, she joins ‘the long list of Christian martyrs in Mosul.’

For the source, ‘Tensions between Sunnis and Shias are running high across Iraq, not only in the North. And peace and national reconciliation appear far off.’

Mosul is a stronghold of Sunni Wahhabism, which is closely tied to Saudi Arabia. For experts on Iraqi politics, the aim is ‘to set up a state based on Sharia,’ with the Qur’an and the Sunnah as the basis of legislation and ‘Islam as the only state religion’. In such a system, members of other religions can choose between conversion, flight or paying taxes for non-Muslims.

In northern Iraq, Christians have been targeted for murder and kidnapping for the purpose of extortion. They have also been caught in the crossfire between Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds vying for power and control of the area’s rich oil resources.

In ten years of conflict, the Christian community has lost more than half of its members in an exodus of ‘Biblical’ proportions following a series of murders.

A Christian official in Mosul Governatorate, anonymous for security reasons, acknowledged that ‘many Christian families’ have fled. ‘They have lost confidence in everything,’ he said. ‘The government is incapable of doing anything to protect them. What future do non-Muslims have in countries where violence reins!'” Source – AsiaNews.it.

Flashback: Iraq’s ‘Twilight of Christianity’: Fleeing Islamic Extremism, Exodus From North Signals Iraqi Christians’ Slow Decline – “Iraq’s dwindling Christians, driven from their homes by attacks and intimidation, are beginning to abandon the havens they had found in the country’s north, discouraged by unemployment and a creeping fear that the violence they had fled was catching up to them. Their quiet exodus to Turkey, Jordan, Europe and the United States is the latest chapter of a seemingly inexorable decline that many religious leaders say tolls the twilight of Christianity in a land where city skylines have long been marked by both minarets and church steeples. Recent assessments say that Iraq’s Christian population has now fallen by more than half since the 2003 American invasion, and with the military’s departure, some Christians say they lost a protector of last resort.” Read more.

Islamists in Iraq to Christians: ‘If Anyone Decides to Reopen His Store, We Will Kill Him’ – “The Islamist campaign against all things contrary to Sharia Law continues, and to drive home just how dead serious they are about preventing Christians in Zakho and elsewhere from buying and selling products, notes have been left for Christians informing them that if they reopen their stores, they will be killed …” Read more.

MorningStarNews – “Non-Arab Christians in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains said they feel forgotten after Sudanese air forces killed at least 11 of the faithful in bombings before and after Christmas, according to area sources.

Following bombings of non-Arab civilians in Christian villages in Sudan’s South Kordofan state from Dec. 18 to Dec. 26, the ethnic Nuba Christians are praying for a change of government in Khartoum, said a church leader from the state who recently visited Juba.

‘We are surprised why the international community is so silent about the killing in South Kordofan,’ said the church leader, who requested anonymity.

On Wednesday (Dec. 26) Sudan’s Russian-made Antonov airplanes dropped nine bombs in Al Dar village in Buram County, killing two Christian women – 70-year-old Kuku Tia and 45-year-old Aisha Tutu Tolodi, the source said. The same attack struck a different Christian village, Um Serdiba in Buram County, where two Christian children were killed instantly, he said. They were identified as Rehab Adam Alfol, 8 and her 4-year-old sister, Najaha Adam Alfol.

According to online news portal Nuba Reports, at 12:30 a.m. of the same day Sudan dropped 12 bombs on Kauda town, wounding pastor Ayube Ibrahim and killing three cows. Nuba Reports, run by aid worker Ryan Boyette, who remained in South Kordofan after his Christian humanitarian organization was forced to evacuate when military conflict escalated last year, reported that four churches in Kauda usually celebrate Christmas for three days starting Dec. 25.

The church leader who spoke to Morning Star News said area contacts reported that in Um Serdiba village on Dec. 23, a Sudanese bomb killed Sholi Jalbor, a Christian civilian whose house was reduced to ashes in the attack.

On Dec. 18, five people from one family were killed when Read more…

By Nick Fagge, Mail Online – “Syrian rebels beheaded a Christian man and fed his body to dogs, according to a nun who says the West is ignoring atrocities committed by Islamic extremists.

The nun said taxi driver Andrei Arbashe, 38, was kidnapped after his brother was heard complaining that fighters against the ruling regime behaved like bandits.

She said his headless corpse was found by the side of the road, surrounded by hungry dogs. He had recently married and was soon to be a father.

Sister Agnes-Mariam de la Croix said: ‘His only crime was his brother criticised the rebels, accused them of acting like bandits, which is what they are.’

There have been a growing number of accounts of atrocities carried out by rogue elements of the Syrian Free Army, which opposes dictator Bashar al-Assad and is recognised by Britain and the West as the legitimate leadership.

Sister Agnes-Miriam, mother superior of the Monastery of St James the Mutilated, has condemned Britain and the west for supporting the rebels despite growing evidence of human rights abuses. Murder, kidnapping, rape and robbery are becoming commonplace, she says.

‘The free and democratic world is supporting extremists,’ Sister Agnes-Miriam said from her sanctuary in Lebanon. ‘They want to impose Sharia Law and create an Islamic state in Syria.’

The 60-year-old Carmelite nun claims the west has turned a blind eye to growing evidence of a ‘fifth column’ of fanatics within the rag-tag ranks that make up the Free Syrian Army that they back to oust Assad.

One of the most effective fighting forces is the Jabat Al-Nusra, which has an ideology similar to Al Qaeda.

‘The uprising has been hijacked by Islamist mercenaries who are more interested in fighting a holy war than in changing the government,’ she said.

‘It has turned into a sectarian conflict. One in which Christians are paying a high price.’” Read more.

Flashback: Syria: Islamist Rebel Commander Injects Syringe Filled With Diesel Fuel Into Christian, ‘Die Slowly, Christian Dog’ – “Who are these snipers? Are they locals? This question seems crucial. Everyone in the region is either for or against Bashir al-Assad’s regime, it’s a bipolar world: Christians and Shia mostly for, Sunnis mostly against… ‘This is what they are like. One of the killers, the commander of the ‘Bara’ brigade, was found with a syringe full of diesel. He injected it into a man, a Christian, saying, ‘Die slowly, you Christian dog’.’” Read more.

Flashback: Syrian Islamist Rebels To Christians: Prepare To Die If You Refuse To Convert To Islam Or Pay The ‘Jizyah’ – “This led to a question about the future of Syria’s minorities such as the Christians. Ahmed, Basah, and Hamid Hassan all agreed – Christians could only live there if they either converted, or paid the ‘Jizyah’ – a special tax levied on non-Muslims in previous centuries in the Middle East. If not said Bahar, they could be killed. When asked why, the answer was, to them, quite simple – because the Prophet Mohammed said so.” Read more.

Romans 8:35, 38-39, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? [Shall] tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?… For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

ICC – “Tens of thousands of Christians, caught in a crossfire between Sudanese armed forces and rebels in Nuba Mountains, are facing indiscriminate air strikes, detentions, and starvation – with no access to humanitarian aid.

The Arab-Muslim dominated Khartoum government has ‘adopted a strategy to treat all populations in rebel held areas as enemies and legitimate targets, without distinguishing between civilian and combatant,’ says a Dec. 12 report by Human Rights Watch, concerning the conflict in Nuba Mountains, home to Sudan’s largest Christian population and non-Arab Muslims.

HRW’s field research shows that in the absence of an international call to end violence, bombings have greatly intensified in the Nuba Mountains state of Southern Kordofan.

Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) dropped 106 bombs in October, and 125 in the first half of November alone, the report says. ‘The persistent bombing has terrorized the population; most families have dug foxholes near their homes or moved to sheltered areas, and even small children now refer to the ‘Antonovs,’ the common name for the cargo planes used by Sudan to drop bombs.’

Government forces burned 26 Nuban villages, destroying schools, homes, churches, food crops and grasslands, in the Nuba Mountains in November alone, according to the Satellite Sentinel Project, which analyzes satellite imagery and eyewitness reports from the ground.

The U.N. estimates over 200,000 people have been displaced and fled over the borders, mostly into South Sudan. The people of Nuba Mountains are also living in constant danger of arbitrary detention, which is taking place on a massive scale and being seen as a new method of intimidation and terror to force them to leave their villages, writes Osman Naway, a local human rights defender, in an article on allafrica.com.” Read more.

Flashback: Sudan Imam: ‘We Will Never Forgive Christians For Not Being Muslims’, Suggests That Christianity Must Be Eliminated Throughout The North – “… Muslims vie to take school land and anti-Christian messages emanate from a nearby mosque loudspeaker on most Fridays. Muslim leaders have been asserting through the mosque loudspeaker that Christian institutions should not be permitted in Sudan, as the country should be a ‘purely Islamic state’ since the secession of South Sudan on July 9, 2011, he said. ‘We are expecting the level of persecution to rise in Sudan in the coming days,’ a pastor who works at the Bible school told Morning Star News by phone, adding that hostilities against churches and Christians were intensifying.” Read more.

Flashback: North Sudan: President Al-Bashir Moves Forward with Rewriting the Country’s Constitution to Implement Sharia Law – “Sudanese leader Omer Hassan Al-Bashir is moving forward with rewriting the country’s constitution to implement Shariah law, according to reports from organizations with links inside the Muslim-dominated nation… a Shariah-compliant constitution will mean more suffering for Sudan’s remaining Christians. ‘This new law (Shariah compliant constitution) is going to affect a significant number of Christians who live in places like Khartoum (the capital city). There are still a significant number of Christians in Sudan,’ Racho said.” Read more.

Revelation 6:9-11, “When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, ‘How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’ Then a white robe was given to each of them; and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer, until both [the number of] their fellow servants and their brethren, who would be killed as they [were], was completed.”

Osun Defender – “The non-Muslim population resident in the Muslim dominated northern Nigerian State of Kano continues to suffer death in the hands on the native Kano indigene.

Information available to 247ureports.com indicates that two teenage students, aged 16 and 17 years were shot dead by unknown Muslim gunmen on Thursday December 6, 2012 at the Yankaba area of Kano metropolitan city near Hadeja road.

Eyewitness reports indicate that the shooting incident occurred some minutes after 7pm near Yankaba area popularly referred as Anambra – line when unknown gunmen riding on a motorbike instantly shot the two teenagers to death at close range – while wailing ‘Allah is Great’ in Arabic. The gunmen escaped immediately.

The names of the two teenagers killed were Daniel Nwachukwu, aged 17 [from Owerri] and Chukwuemeka Emmanuel Agazie [from Umuchu], aged 16. Both were childhood friends who grew up in Yankaba. Daniel recently secured university admission in Imo state.

247ureports.com spoke to the fathers of the murdered boys, Solomon Agazie and Nwachukwu. They expressed shock and disbelief over the killing of their innocent sons in cold blood. Mr Nwachukwu who was heavily saddened, cried repeatedly ‘Who killed my son? What offence has he committed to be shot instantly to death without justice?’

The father told our correspondent that on Thursday, Daniel visited his friend, Chukwuebuka and while Chukwuebuka was seeing off Daniel just 200 metres away from his home, when Chukwuebuka sister, who was in the bathroom had two gun shots, rushed out to the scene, only to discover that her brother and friend had been shot to death.

In panic, she alerted her parents. Both fathers rushed out to see the dead body of their two boys lying in a pool of blood – bullet riddled body.

Within about 10minutes after the shooting, the agents of the Joint Task Force [JTF] stationed in Kano arrived and carried the bodies of the teenagers to the Bompai Police station where the incident was recorded and thereafter the bodies were taken to the Murtala Mohammed Specialist Hospital mortuary for autopsy.” Read more.