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Twenty-four hours after the time when the Greek Metropolitan Pavlos and bishop of Aleppo, and Johanna Ibrahim are supposed to have been released, the information about the end of the abduction has not yet been officially confirmed.

In a message issued late on Tuesday, the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs states:

"From the moment that we learnt of the kidnapping of the Greek Metropolitan of Aleppo Pavlos and the Syrian Metropolitan of the city of Gregorios Johanna Ibrahim, we have been following the situation and any related news with great attention.

In recent hours, the international and Greek media have disseminated information from different sources, according to which the two kidnapped bishops had been released.

So far, this information has not been officially confirmed. A new message will follow every confirmed development of the case."

Although Agence France Presse informed that the two bishops had been released, neither of them has contacted the Patriarchate of Antioch.

According to some sources, the bishops were released late in the evening on Tuesday. According to others - they were released and were hiding somewhere along the Turkish-Syrian border and would appear on Wednesday morning. None of this has happened and no such information has been confirmed by official sources.

Patriarch of Antioch Ignatios appeals to anyone who can provide some information about the bishops to do so. He and his close associates spent the night attempting to clarify the situation by constantly contacting the government of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. The representatives of the regime, however, said they could not do anything because the events had happened in the rebel-controlled border region.

In an interview for the Greek radio station Alpha 989, the associate of the Greek Metropolitan, Archimandrite Ignatios Yapitzoglou, determined the information about the liberation of the hierarchs as deceitful and called on the governments of the countries involved to make every effort to put an end to the kidnapping.

"We only know that a group of Chechens have kidnapped them," he said, adding that so far, no one has requested a ransom.