A group of nuns kidnapped in Maaloula, Syria, in December were released early Monday, tired but unharmed.
“God did not leave us,” Mother Pelagia Sayyaf, superior of the Mar Takla monastery in Maaloula, told news reporters after the nuns had been released to Syrian authorities as part of a prisoner exchange involving 150 women and children who had been held by the Syrian government.
Sayyaf said she and the other nuns and their attendants were well treated during their captivity in Lebanon. “The [Al-Nusra] Front was good to us… but we took off our crosses because we were in the wrong place to wear them,” she was quoted by the BBC as saying.
The Al-Nursa Front, a jihadist group affiliated with Al-Qaeda, is believed to have abducted the women.
Source: BBC