CWN - A Syrian prelate has denied an Arabic-language web report that rebels massacred 70 Christians, including three priests, in Qamishli, a city of 185,000 in northeastern Syria.

Apparently referring to the priests, Archbishop Jacques Behnan Hindo of Hassaké-Nisibi told the Fides news agency that “in the hours when rumors about their murder were spread, I was at lunch with them in Qamishli.”

In northeastern Syria, “jihadist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are killing all the other [rebel] brigades,” said Archbishop Hindo. “For this reason I have news that some groups of former soldiers in the opposition have asked to return to the army. There is the widespread impression of a tacit truce exchanged in some situations between the government army and Islamist militias’ rebels, who now have jihadist groups as a common enemy.”