It’s being reported today that the number of Assyrian Christian hostages that ISIS has captured is now around 262, up from 150 just yesterday:
CNN – ISIS has seized even more Assyrian Christian hostages after taking over nearly a dozen Assyrian villages in northeastern Syria in the past few days, an activist said Thursday.
The Sunni extremist group now holds 262 Assyrians captive, said Osama Edward, founder of the Assyrian Human Rights Network.
“ISIS is taking over more and more Assyrian towns,” he said.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the number of Assyrian hostages seized over three days at 220, in a statement released Thursday.
They were taken from 11 villages in the Tal Tamer area in al-Hasakah Province, the monitoring group said. Its information indicates that ISIS has taken them to the Mount Abdelaziz area, southwest of Tal Tamer.
Edward, who is based in Sweden but has family in the area attacked by the terror group, said Wednesday his information was coming from the Assyrian Human Rights Network’s team on the ground.
According to Osama Edward, there are around 5,000 Assyrian Christians trying to flee the area to avoid capture. They would like to go to Turkey, however a prominent Syrian Archbishop from the area says Turkey is blocking the Assyrian Christians from entering the country while allowing ISIS members to come and go freely:
HURRIYET – A prominent bishop on Feb. 25 accused Turkey of preventing Christians from fleeing Syria while allowing jihadists responsible for their persecution to cross its border unchecked.
Jacques Behnan Hindo, the Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Hasakeh-Nisibi, made the claim on Vatican Radio, a day after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group abducted at least 90 Assyrian Christians from villages which had been under the control of Kurdish forces.
“Every day, families are emigrating from Damascus by plane because of the blockade we have around us,” the bishop said.
“In the north, Turkey allows through lorries, Daesh (ISIL) fighters, oil stolen from Syria, wheat and cotton: all of these can cross the border but nobody [from the Christian community] can pass over.”
Of course. Why would Turkey allow Christians to flee there when it is working with ISIS in the first place.
Horrible.