Ruptly
"Armenian Christians gathered in the Syrian province of Aleppo on Friday to mark the 111th anniversary of the 'genocide' committed by the Ottoman Empire. Footage shows prayers being held to honour the souls of the victims and a wreath-laying ceremony at the memorial, attended by residents and clergy. It also shows residents donating blood as part of an initiative linked to the commemoration. "Today, we stand as the children of these people who overcame these hardships and passed from death to life. This is the 24th of April, the day the massacres began. Every year, we renew this commemoration to keep it alive," said Bishop Boutros Marayati, Head of the Armenian Catholic Community in Aleppo. "We held prayers, visited the graves and laid wreaths in honour of the souls of the martyrs. We donated drops of our blood to our Syrian people, to the people who hosted the Armenians in 1915 when they were forcibly driven from their homes and lands and arrived in Syria," shared Maral Qalaijian, Secretary of the Executive Council of the Armenian Orthodox Archdiocese of Aleppo. Ceremonies commemorating the Armenian Genocide have been held annually on April 24 since the 1920s, a date marking the anniversary of the arrest of hundreds of Armenian intellectuals in the Ottoman capital, Constantinople, in 1915, before their execution. The deportation of hundreds of thousands of Armenians between 1915 and 1916 remains a historically contentious period. Armenian sources estimate the death toll at 1.5 million, while Turkey maintains that the events cannot be described as 'genocide' and puts the number of dead at around 300,000 people."
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