by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - While thousands of Christians now live in grave danger of murder at the hands of the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan, an Afghan believing family has managed to escape and arrive safely in Italy, International Christian Concern (ICC) reports.
Their names withheld for security reasons, the Afghan Christian family, including eight minors, arrived in Rome from Kabul on August 21.
The family was helped by the Fondazione Meet Human organization, which arranged their escape from the Taliban. “We are grateful to Italian civilian and military authorities for this complicated and demanding rescue operation, not to mention the many people who worked for its success,” Danielle Nembrini, President of Fondazione Meet Human, said in a statement. “It might be a drop in the ocean, but the ocean is made up of drops.”
Persecuted even before the Taliban took over Afghanistan on August 15, the Afghan church of an estimated 8,000-12,000 is in severe danger of execution and/or enslavement of women and girls.
“We are telling people to stay in their houses because going out now is too dangerous,” a Christian leader in Afghanistan, whose name is being withheld for security reasons, told ICC last week. “Some known Christians are already receiving threatening phone calls. In these phone calls, unknown people say, ‘We are coming for you’.”
Even before the Taliban takeover this month, Afghanistan ranked 2 on the US Open Doors Watch List 2021 of the top 50 countries where Christians are persecuted.