YEREVAN. – The Armenian Public Council (APC) has decided to petition to the 70 public councils of the 67 countries of the international organization of public councils. 

With the petition, APC will urge its partners to make use of their influence to stop the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria, present the events in Syria’s predominantly Armenian-populated town of Kessab, and to condemn these incidents as Turkey’s yet another hostile attack against the peaceful existence of the Armenian people.    

At the APC session on Wednesday, the council members also noted that such events always occur unexpectedly, the society and the state agencies are not fully prepared for these occurrences, and there are no guarantees that such incidents will not repeat in the future.

Consequently, the APC decided to develop a list of state and public measures, to more quickly respond to similar situations and learn lessons from the events in Kessab. 

In the early morning on March 21, armed militants from the Jabhat al-Nusra Islamic terrorist group infiltrated into northern Syria’s Latakia Governorate, which is predominantly inhabited by Armenians and Alawites, from four directions. Two large groups of terrorists had launched the attack from Turkey. About 600 Kessab-Armenian families were initially sheltered in Latakia city. On March 23, Turkish fighter planes downed a Syrian military aircraft that was conducting a mission against the Islamic terrorists in Kessab. A group of Armenia parliament members recently visited Syria to assess the situation in the region.