Syrian Orthodox Christians attend Easter mass in Damascus, Syria in April. (AP Photo/Bassem Tellawi)

It seems there’s no lowest point to the depravity of those murdering the innocent in Syria, and that includes atrocities carried out by those whom the West has decided to support. With each new atrocity, one can’t help thinking “It couldn’t be worse.” Well, it just got worse.

A leading nun in Syria is reporting that a young Christian man in Syria was beheaded by jihadi rebels who then fed his mutilated body to dogs.

Speaking to Britain’s Sunday Times, Agnes-Mariam de la Croix – who is mother superior of the Monastery of St James the Mutilated located between Damascus and Homs – said of the incident which occurred in early December: “They beheaded him, cut him into pieces and fed him to the dogs.”

She says 38-year-old Andrei Arbashe was a newlywed whose wife was about to give birth.

Those who killed him apparently acted after Arbashe’s brother was overheard complaining the rebels were “behaving like bandits.”

The Sunday Times reports:

Sister Agnes-Mariam, who has been keeping a macabre scorecard of such atrocities, believes that his fault, in the eyes of his killers, was his Christian faith.

“The uprising has been hijacked by Islamist mercenaries who are more interested in fighting a holy war than in changing the government,” she told The Sunday Times on a recent visit to Paris. “It’s turned into a sectarian conflict,” she added. “One in which Christians are paying a high price.”

A highly educated Carmelite nun of Palestinian and Lebanese descent, Sister Agnes-Mariam fled Syria over the summer after being warned that she was on the rebels’ “blacklist” for abduction.

She has been on an international tour since then to warn the world about the uprising’s “extremist” drift as the conflict turns into a magnet for Islamist mercenaries from all over the world, including Britain.

No video or still photographs have emerged to document the atrocity, and TheBlaze cannot verify the nun’s account.

Just last month, a Syrian opposition group posted a graphic video which showed a child helping rebels behead a man with a machete.

President Bashar Assad – even while ruling with an iron fist – for the most part protected Syria’s minorities including Christians and Alawites of which Assad himself is a member.

As the bloodletting continues and the Sunni rebel forces have been hijacked by al-Qaeda supporting extremists, Christians fear they won’t be safe in a post-Assad era. They are also worried that if Al Qaeda-inspired Islamist rebels take control, they could establish Sharia law as the law of the land as occurred in Egypt.

The Associated Press reported last week that Syrian Christians were keeping a low profile, afraid to even put up Christmas trees in their homes lest they draw the attention of the jihadis.

“Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Syria’s population of more than 22 million, say they are particularly vulnerable to the violence that has been sweeping the country since March 2011. They are fearful that Syria will become another Iraq, with Christians caught in the crossfire between rival Islamic groups,” wrote the AP.

Since Saddam Hussein was ousted from power in 2003, hundreds of thousands of Christians fled Iraq as Islamic militants targeted them.

Sister Agnes-Mariam characterizes the Syrian Christians’ predicament as being caught between Assad’s Alawites – an offshoot of Shiite Islam – and the opposition Sunnis, like “filling in a sandwich.”

She is sharply critical of western nations for supporting the rebels even though the extremists among them are violating basic human rights. She tells the Sunday Times:

“They want to impose sharia,” said Agnes-Mariam, 60. “It’s a scandal that the free and democratic world is supporting extremists,” she added in a reference to western backing for the coalition.

Some have accused her of being a propagandist for the dictator Assad: her claim that rebel forces were responsible for the Houla massacre in which more than 100 civilians died, half of them children, has been challenged by a United Nations commission of inquiry, which blamed the regime.

The Daily Mail quoted the nun saying that militants wearing Al Qaeda black bandanas recently placed a two-day siege on her monastery to try to prevent Christians from celebrating the Christmas holiday.

She estimates that 300,000 Christians have been displaced since the conflict began in March 2011, including 80,000 forced out of the Homs region.

A new study released on Christmas Eve reported Christianity is in serious danger of being wiped out in the Middle East because of Islamic oppression. The report titled “Christianophobia” said Christians are suffering more persecution around the world than any other religious group mainly due to “Islamic oppression.”