Four months after he was taken captive by IS fighters in north-eastern Syria, 70-year-old François Sawa was safely released and is in good health. Meanwhile In Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, Christian families are fleeing their homes after horrific fighting killed at least ten people, most of them children, and injured a further 150 . A few days later, two Armenian Christian men were killed in a mortar explosion in Aleppo. One was a visiting pastor from Armenia who had arrived only two days earlier. ‘All our congregation members are in agony,’ said Barnabas Fund’s partner on the ground in Syria, as he relayed the news. With fighting coming from four fronts, thousands of Christians have fled the city in terror. There are between 45,000 and 90,000 Christians living in Aleppo, down from 465,000 in 2010. IS forces have again attacked the north-eastern city of Hassake as well as the northern city of Kobane on 25 June.