- Joined
- Mar 3, 2015
- Messages
- 124
- Points
- 0
Islamic State 'kidnaps 230 Christians' after Syrian town falls
Date August 8, 2015 - 9:44AM
Louisa Loveluck and Nabih Bulos
Telegraph UK, TNS
Tens of thousands of Yazidis and Christians have fled for their lives after IS declared a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria. Photo: Reuters
Amman: Islamic State militants have captured dozens of Christian families after snatching the regime-held Syrian town of Qaryatain.
The extremist group are said by observers to have seized entire families from churches and houses on Wednesday as they gained control after taking three checkpoints in suicide attacks.
As many as 230 people are missing, including followers of the Syriac Orthodox or Syriac Catholic churches.
Rased News Network, a Facebook page affiliated with Islamic State militants, published this picture showing a militant on a tank captured from Syrian forces in Qaryatain. Photo: Uncredited
Bishop Matta al-Khoury, secretary of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate in Damascus, said ISIS had used a number of kidnapped residents as human shields against regime air strikes.
Qaryatain, south-west of the ancient city of Palmyra, had a pre-war population of 18,000, including Sunni Muslims and 2000 Syriac Catholics and Orthodox Christians.
Bishop al-Khoury said about 180 Christians were in the town when IS seized control.
Islamic State militants carry weapons as they battle against Syrian government forces in Qaryatain in a photo released by Rased News Network on Facebook. Photo: Uncredited
The extremists have been targeting the minority Christian community as it spreads its tendrils through war-torn Syria.
In areas where IS and the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front have seized control, churches have been destroyed, crosses smashed, and in some cases, residents have been forced to pay the "jiyza", a religious tax.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said many of Qaryatain's Christians had already fled south from Aleppo, seeking refuge in the town.
Archbishop Bashar Matti Warda, of Erbil, Iraq, left, and Archbishop Jean-Clement Jeanbart, of Aleppo, Syria, speak at a news conference on Tuesday about the plight of persecuted Middle Eastern Christians. Photo: AP
Those abducted were wanted by IS for "collaborating with the regime" and their names were on a list used by the jihadists as they swept through the town, it said.
Forty-five women and 19 children are among those missing.
About 45 regime soldiers were killed during the militants' "combing operations" in hills that lie west of the city, a pro-IS agency said.
In the nearby government-controlled city of Homs, churches have been overwhelmed as hundreds of people seek sanctuary from the violence in Qaryatain.
"They need immediate aid," said Nuri Kino, head of the activist group A Demand For Action.
"You never get used to hearing from the priests or the bishops. There is fear in their voices, they are pleading to the world and no one is listening."
The capture of Qaryatain brings IS within 40 kilometres of the strategic Damascus-Homs highway, which acts as the main supply artery connecting the capital to central Syria and the coastal provinces of Tartous and Latakia.
It also affords the group potential access to the Qalamoun area, an important mountain range that has been a vital corridor for Syrian rebels into neighbouring Lebanon.
Amnesty International called for the release of detainees.
"The abhorrent abduction in Syria of more than 200 people by Islamic State highlights the dreadful plight of civilians caught up in the conflict in the country," Neil Sammonds, Amnesty International's Syria researcher, said in a statement on Friday.
The international human rights organisation called on Islamic State to "respect the rules of war and immediately release those civilians unharmed".
