Islamic State snatches 220 from Christian villages – Syria monitoring group

Islamic State snatches 220 from Christian villages – Syria monitoring group

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Islamic State militants have abducted at least 220 people from Assyrian Christian villages in northeastern Syria during a three-day offensive, a monitoring group that tracks violence in Syria said on Thursday.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the abductions took place when Islamic State captured 10 villages inhabited by the ancient Christian minority near Hasaka, a city mainly held by the Kurds, in the past three days.

Islamic State has ruthlessly targeted members of religious minorities, as well as fellow Sunni Muslims who refuse to swear allegiance to the ‘caliphate’ it has declared in parts of Syria and Iraq.

A video released last week showed its members beheading 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya. Last August it killed or enslaved hundreds of Iraq’s Yazidis, whom it considers devil worshippers.

The militants have previously used kidnappings to trade captives for their own captured fighters but it was not clear if they planned to use the same tactic with the Assyrians, whose abduction they have not yet claimed.

The United States on Wednesday condemned the attacks on Assyrian Christian villages, which it said included the burning of homes and churches and abduction of women, children and the elderly.

Hundreds of Christians have now fled to the two main cities in Hasaka province, according to the Syriac National Council, a Syrian Christian group.

LAND BRIDGE

The region is strategically important to Islamic State as one of the bridges between land it controls in Syria and Iraq. In recent weeks it has lost ground in northeast Syria after being pushed out of the Kurdish town of Kobani in January by Kurdish forces backed by U.S.

via NorthEast Calling http://ift.tt/1AaQFUq