Beleaguered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was to deliver a speech on Sunday, January 6, a day after rights activists said a shell hit a Christian area of Damascus and a car bomb exploded elsewhere in the Syrian capital.
Burma’s government admitted Thursday, January 3, that the military is involved in airstrikes against the mainly Christian Kachin, a week after Worthy News and other media carried reports about a massive offensive in the north of the country.
Christians in Islamist-run Sudan have ushered in the New Year amid ongoing airstrikes by Sudanese government forces that killed at least 11 believers before and after Christmas, while two priests remained detained for converting a Muslim.
Up to 13 people were crushed to death and some 120 injured as they tried to enter an overcrowded stadium for an evangelism gathering of a Pentecostal church in Angola’s capital Luanda, officials confirmed late Tuesday, January 1.
Egypt’s Foreign Ministry reported that an explosion at a Coptic church in Misrata, Libya, killed two Egyptian citizens and wounded two others Sunday during preparations for New Year’s Eve mass.
In Iran, an Iranian-born American pastor with dual citizenship remains behind bars in Evin prison for the holidays.
Iranian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who was recently acquitted of apostasy, has been returned to prison on an earlier charge, rights activists told Worthy News.
‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the state, not a Christian was stirring, because those who dared attend services in Nigeria that night risked their very lives.
At least twelve Christians were killed by gunmen in separate attacks; the assailants are suspected to be militant members of Boko Haram, an Islamist group that has already killed nearly 100 Christians around Christmas in Nigeria over the past three years.
Iranian Church leaders have urged prayers for Christians in Iran amid concerns authorities will raid more house churches and detain believers over the Christmas and Western New Year period.
This month in Uzbekistan, a dozen Bostanlyk policemen raided a gathering of 80 Protestants on holiday together at the Phoenix resort near the capital.
A Muslim cleric has issued a fatwa threatening Iraqi Christians unless they convert to Islam, but the country’s prime minister urged them to stay.
Christian groups have petitioned the U.S. government to designate the African Islamist group Boko Haram as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, but that designation is opposed by Nigeria’s own government.
A Cairo court sentenced a Coptic Christian to three years in prison Wednesday for posting portions of an American-made film about Islam that was blamed for widespread unrest in the Middle East.
A prosecutor probing a possible link between the assassination of a Christian newspaper editor and the Malatya murders of Turkish Christians was abruptly transferred last week to another court.
Churches and mosques in Kazakhstan are being forced to close as that nation’s deadline for mandatory re-registration expires, but many religious communities have complained that the procedures for their closures were both arbitrary and flawed.
Protestants from two officially restricted churches in West Java gave 6,000 postcards to Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, asking him for permission to worship in their own buildings for Christmas.
In Islamabad Sunday, a man accused his own uncle of disrespecting the Prophet Muhammad, prompting local authorities to register the case under Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws as determined by the legal personnel at Police Station I-9.
Because of its repressive policies, Eritrea has been dubbed the “North Korea of Africa”: currently more than 2,000 Christians are believed to be imprisoned there for their faith.
Minority Christians in Syria’s largest city Aleppo said they face starvation after dozens of believers already died in targeted attacks rocking Christian areas of the war-torn country.
A Protestant pastor who faced deportation from Kazakhstan to his native Uzbekistan and up to 15 years imprisonment for leading an unregistered house church has been flown to safety, his supporters confirmed.