The government and the opposition welcome and need Christian support, as the 18-month-long Syrian conflict continues to roil. Some Christians fear radical Islamists have been swelling rebel ranks. Christians make up roughly 10 percent of the population. Syria is ruled by a government dominated by Alawites, whose faith is an offshoot of Shiism.  Aid agencies say Syria's two million Christians are frequently targeted for suspected sympathies to President Bashar al-Assad's regime. Two top bishops have been kidnapped and a well-known priest remains missing.

"For now in our area here it's fine," Antoinette Nassrallah, the Christian owner of a cafe in Maaloula said last year. "But what I heard, in Aleppo, they are killing, destroying many of churches -- very, very old churches." Many of Syria's Christians have fled to Lebanon where they shelter in monasteries. The faithful have joined in prayers for peace promoted by Pope Francis in Rome. The U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on leaders of al-Nusra last year while the State Department blacklisted it as a foreign terror organization linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The al-Nusra Front has emerged as one of the most effective groups in the Syrian resistance. They have enlisted foreign fighters with combat experience in Iraq and elsewhere. Washington has accused the group of using the Syrian conflict to advance its own ideology and ends. Elsewhere in Syria, Russia sent a plane to pick up its citizens from the war-torn Middle East nation, state media reported Sunday.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Fighters that have been linked to Al Qaeda took control of the Christian village of Maaloula after fighting with regime forces. Fears have been reignited about western support for the rebel groups, which strongly infiltrated by Islamic extremists. The rebels, many of who sport beards, shouting the phrase  "Allahu Akbar" (God is great), attacked Christian homes and churches shortly after moving into the village, saying that they had "liberated" the residents from government forces. 

"They shot and killed people," one Maaloula resident says. "I heard gunshots and then I saw three bodies lying in the middle of a street in the old quarters of the village. Where is President Obama to see what has befallen us?" "I saw the militants grabbing five villagers and threatening them and saying, "either you convert to Islam, or you will be beheaded,'" another Christian resident said.

Another said one church had been torched while other gunmen stormed into two other churches and robbed them. Villagers said they heard several foreign accents among the rebels, with many feared to be Al Qaeda fighters imported into the conflict. A villager said he heard lots of Tunisian, Libyan, Moroccan and Chechen dialects. In a video posted online, a rebel commander shouted at the camera: "We cleansed Maaloula from all the Assad dogs and all his thugs." In the meantime, Syria's state news agency claimed the rebels had withdrawn and the regime had regained the village, saying: "The army inflicted heavy losses in the ranks of the terrorists."