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UN envoy Staffan de Mistura paid a surprise visit on March 1 to a church near war-wracked Syria's capital in a show of solidarity with the country's Christian minority targeted by jihadists.
      
An AFP photographer said de Mistura travelled in a two-car UN convoy to a Greek Catholic church in Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, and met with priest Toma Asitivo Kaka.

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have abducted 220 Assyrian Christians from villages in northeastern Syria in recent days, a monitoring group said on Feb. 26, more than twice as many as previously reported.