Yabroud

Yabroud is a city in the Rif Dimashq Governorate of Syria, about 80 kilometers north of Damascus, with 25,891 residents in the city proper and roughly 50,000 in its metropolitan area at the 2004 census. The area is home to the Jabroudian caves, discovered in 1930, and to the oldest church in Syria, and the settlement is recorded in Mesopotamian pottery tablets from the first century BC. During the Syrian civil war it served as a rebel stronghold from 2011 until government forces recaptured it in 2014.