PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenia will deploy a contingent in Lebanon under the Italian command within the framework of the UN peacekeeping mission, President Serzh Sargsyan told the Italian daily Corrierre della Serra, Public Radio of Armenia website reported.

Armenia, along with the international community, is highly concerned with the developments in the Middle East, the President said. “There are large and vibrant Armenian communities in Iraq and Syria, who have lived there for years in harmony with Muslims. We are now witnessing gradual annihilation of the Christian cultural heritage in those regions.

The Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS) destroyed the Armenian Genocide Memorial Church in Deir ez-Zor, Syria.

Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian issued a statement condemning the destruction of the church, which housed the remains of victims of the Armenian Genocide, calling it a “horrible barbarity.”

Nalbandian called upon the international community to cut the Islamic State’s sources of supply, support, and financing, and eradicate what it referred to as a disease that “threatened civilized mankind.”