Ibrahim Continues Contacts to Release Abducted Bishops, Maalula Nuns

General Security chief Major General Abbas Ibrahim continued on Monday his efforts to release the two bishops and nuns kidnapped in Syria in April and December 2013 respectively, reported OTV.

It said that he carried out to that end talks with Patriarch of Antioch and All the East Youhanna X Yazigi.

Last week, Ibrahim said that officers from his directorate met with representatives of the kidnappers of the nuns, kidnapped in Syria's Maalula region, in the presence of a Qatari delegation.

He had stated that negotiations in the matter are “on the right track.”

LBCI television had reported at the time that the abductors are demanding the release of a number of Islamist inmates from Roumieh prison in return for freeing two Lebanese nuns who are among the kidnapped women.

In December, jihadists and opposition fighters entered the Syrian Christian town of Maalula and took 12 Lebanese and Syrian Greek Orthodox nuns from the Mar Takla Monastery to the Yabrud area in Qalamoun near Damascus.

The 12 nuns join two bishops and a priest who are already believed to be held by hardline rebels, deepening concerns that extremists in the opposition's ranks are targeting Christians.

The abducted nuns had appeared in a video broadcast by Al-Jazeera, in which they reassured that they are in good health.

Bishops Youhanna Ibrahim and Boulos Yazigi were kidnapped on April 23 in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo while they were on a humanitarian work.