Al Qaeda-linked fighters in the rebel-held eastern Syrian city of Raqqa on Monday abducted a prominent Italian Jesuit priest who championed the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, activists said.
Members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant kidnapped Father Paolo Dall’Oglio while he was walking in the city, which had fallen under the control of militant Islamist brigades, the sources in Raqqa province told Reuters.
Syrian authorities expelled Dall’Oglio from the country last year after he helped victims of Assad’s military crackdown from a monastery in the Anti-Lebanon mountains north of Damascus.