Latest batch of Syrian 'rebel' fighters sounded like Saudis, Afghans, Chechens, and Americans said Mother Superior who heard them speak during attack on Christian village-Wash. Post

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9/9/13, "Syrian war makes sudden appearance at convent in historic Christian town," Washington Post, Liz Sly, Beirut

"High in the mountains above Damascus lies a town so remote that Syria’s war had passed it by, so untouched by time that its inhabitants still speak the language of Jesus.

The violence ravaging the rest of Syria has finally caught up with Maaloula, renowned as the oldest Christian community in the world — and the last in which the same version of Aramaic that prevailed 2,000 years ago is the native tongue.

On Sunday, Syrian rebels, including some affiliated with al-Qaeda, swept through Maaloula for the second time in four days, after an assault a few days earlier in which the last of its few thousand residents fled and the specter of unchecked violence threatened to convulse the iconic town.

Only a couple of dozen nuns remained, cowering in fear as warplanes screeched overhead, shells exploded and al-Qaeda-linked fighters overran their convent, turning them into witnesses to what may be one of the more extraordinary encounters of the Syrian war. The monks had fled from their nearby monastery months ago....

P. 2,  The 27 nuns and the two dozen or so orphans they are caring for remained inside, huddled in an ancient cavern known as the Christmas Cave because it resembles the caves in Bethlehem where Jesus was born, said the convent’s mother superior, Pelagia Sayaf, who was interviewed by telephone and has been in charge of the nunnery since 1990....

There were 25 fighters in all, Sayaf said. The one who negotiated with her spoke with a Saudi accent, while others appeared to be from Afghanistan or Chechnya, she said. Several spoke no Arabic, and all of her comments were interpreted from Arabic into English by one of the fighters to the others, she said, leading her to suspect that some were Americans.

In the video, she told the fighters that she had not been harmed, which, she said, is true.
And then, she said, the fighters withdrew from the convent. The nuns remain, praying and expressing no opinions about their hopes for the outcome of a war that could soon engulf the town.

“If you had heard so many explosions in any other place on Earth, many people would be dead,” Sayaf said. “It is because of our faith that we are alive.”" via Free Republic

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