Amman: Daesh terrorists have abducted at least 150 people from Assyrian Christian villages in northeastern Syria they had raided, Christian Syrian activists said on Tuesday. A Syrian Christian group representing several NGOs inside and outside the country said it had verified at least 150 people missing, including women and the elderly, who had been kidnapped by the militants.
“We have verified at least 150 people who have been abducted from sources on the ground,” Bassam Ishak, president of the Syriac National Council of Syria, whose family itself is from Al Hassakeh, said from Amman.
Earlier the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 90 were abducted when the militants carried out dawn raids on rural villages inhabited by the ancient Christian minority west of Al Hassakeh, a city mainly held by the Kurds.
The United States condemned the attacks in Al Hassakeh and called for the immediate and unconditional release of the civilians taken captive. The State Department said hundreds of others remain trapped in villages surrounded by Daesh fighters in violence that has displaced more than 3,000 people.
“[Daesh’s] latest targeting of a religious minority is only further testament to its brutal and inhumane treatment of all those who disagree with its divisive goals and toxic beliefs,” spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.
Psaki added that Syrians are also threatened by President Bashar Al Assad’s intensified bombings and air strikes in an “unrelenting campaign of terror.”
Syrian Kurdish militia launched two offensives against the militants in northeast Syria on Sunday, helped by US-led air strikes and Iraqi Peshmerga.
The Assyrians are indigenous Christian people who trace their roots back to the ancient Mesopotamians.
“We are watching a living history and all that comprises disappear,” wrote Mardean Isaac of A Demand for Action, an activist group that focuses on religious minorities in the Middle East.
He called for further air strikes by American and western powers to assist those Assyrian and Kurdish forces fighting the militants in Syria. The US and coalition of regional partners are conducting a campaign of air strikes against the group.
In its first comments on the subject, the Syrian state-run news agency SANA said around 90 civilians had been kidnapped by Daesh. It said that the militants burnt people’s homes and stole their properties, adding that those kidnapped were taken to Shaddadi city.
This part of Syria borders territory controlled by Daesh in Iraq, where it committed atrocities last year against the Yazidi religious minority.
Daesh did not confirm the kidnappings. Supporters posted photos online of the group’s fighters in camouflage attire looking at maps and firing machine guns. The website said the photos were from Tel Tamr, a town near where the Observatory said the abductions occurred.
Many Assyrian Christians have emigrated in the nearly four-year-long conflict in which more than 200,000 have people have been killed. Before the arrival of Kurds and Arab nomadic tribes at the end of the 19th Century, Christians formed the majority in Syria’s Jazeera area, which includes Al Hassakeh.
‘Seeking safety’
Sunday’s offensive by Kurdish YPG militia reached within five kilometres of Tel Hamis, a Daesh-controlled town southeast of Qamishli, the Observatory said.
At least 14 Daesh fighters died in the offensive, in which Assyrians fought alongside Kurds, it added. Eight civilians were also killed in heavy shelling by the Kurdish side, which seized several Arab villages from Daesh control.
Last year, Daesh fighters abducted several Assyrians in retaliation for some of them fighting alongside the YPG. Most were released after long negotiations.
Military experts said militants were trying to open a new front to relieve pressure on Daesh after several losses since being driven from the Syrian town of Kobani, also known as Ain Al Arab, near the border with Turkey.
“[Daesh] are losing in several areas so they want to wage an attack on a new area,” said retired Jordanian general Fayez Dwiri.
Since driving Daesh from Kobani, Kurdish forces, backed by other Syrian armed groups, have pursued the group’s fighters as far as their provincial stronghold of Raqqa.
A resident of Al Hassakeh, jointly held by the Syrian government and the Kurds, said hundreds of families had arrived in recent days from surrounding Christian villages and Arab Bedouins were arriving from areas along the border.
“Families are coming to Hasaka seeking safety,” said Abdul Rahman Al Nuaimi, a textile trader said by telephone.
