More interfaith outreach.

(AFP) – A Franciscan priest and 20 other Christians have been seized by the Nusra Front in a village in northwestern Syria, the Franciscan mission to the Holy Land said Tuesday.

“On the night of October 5th, Father Hanna Jallouf of the Custody of the Holy Land, parish priest at Qunyeh, Syria, was taken by some brigades linked to Jabhat Al-Nusra,” a statement from the Custody of the Holy Land said.

Following their capture, an unspecified number of Franciscan nuns had taken refuge with the villagers, it said.

Qunyeh is a village of several hundred people in Idlib province, and lies some eight kilometers from the Turkish border.

According to top Franciscan official Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Custos of the Holy Land, the 62-year-old priest was seized along with 20 villagers.

“He has been kidnapped,” he told AFP in Jerusalem, expressing deep concern over the fate of the priest, a Syrian who has worked in Qunyeh for 12 years after a posting in the Jordanian capital, Amman.

“They are accusing them of being collaborators” with the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, he said, insisting that this was not true.

According to a source linked to the Franciscan Order in Aleppo, Nusra rebels had forced their way into the convent and “looted everything.”

He also said Nusra rebels were “angry with Father Hanna because he refused to give them some of the olives harvested from trees on the convent’s land.”