(AINA) -- The body of Şimoni Diril was found today in Turkey, 70 days after the elderly Assyrian couple vanished. The couple was kidnapped on January 11 from their village of Mehr, Kovankaya in the province of Sirnak.

The body was discovered in a river near her village of Mehr. Her husband is still missing.

A witness said that on the afternoon of 11 January, a group of people took Hurmuz Diril and his wife Şimoni from their home and led them to an unknown destination. Their son, Remzi Diri, a priest of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Istanbul, came to visit his parents the following day and found the house empty.

Hurmuz Diril and his wife had returned to Mehr a decade ago to live again in their home village. They were the last Christians in the village and in all these years they had repeatedly rejected the requests by Turkish authorities to abandon the area.