DOHUK, Iraq (CNS) – Dozens of Assyrian Christians were abducted by Islamic State forces during a new offensive against a string of villages in northeastern Syria, aid and civil rights organizations reported.
The exact number of people being held was unknown, but Father Emanuel Youkhana, who heads the Christian Aid Program Northern Iraq, CAPNI, said that more than 100 residents had been captured during the assault, which began in the pre-dawn hours of Feb. 23.
“Knowing the brutal barbaric record of IS with the captured, the destiny of those families is a major concern to us,” Father Youkhana said.
The priest said at least two villages – Tal Shamiran and Tal Hermiz – remained surrounded by Islamic State forces overnight.
It was not immediately clear what the militants would do with the abductees.
The Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need reported that thousands of people fled the villages nestled along the Khabur River and were able to reach the largely Kurdish-controlled city of Hassakeh, Syria, to the east. Bishop Aprim Nathniel of the Assyrian Church of the East reported that a local church and community hall were overloaded with people who fled the villages.
Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan said he had been unable to reach Bishop Jacques Hindo in Hassakeh.
“We pray and hope that these latest tragic events end without killing and abusing our Christian community,” the patriarch told Catholic News Service Feb. 24 from the patriarchate in Beirut.
“It is shameful that the whole world, beginning with the so-called Western nations, became accustomed to these aberrations of religious and ethnic cleansing, in the name of a volatile, unrealistic Western democracy that never existed in countries ruled by Muslims.”