ISIS abducts scores of Assyrians in northeastern Syria, groups say

Assyrians in northeastern Syria villages awoke Tuesday to ISIS militants at their doors, with the Islamist extremists abducting scores from the Christian group and forcing hundreds more to run for their lives, an advocate said.

The ISIS fighters bust past a few men guarding the village of Tal Shamiram around 4 a.m. (9 p.m. ET Monday) and abducted children, women and the elderly, said Usama Edward, the founder of the Assyrian Human Rights Network.

Talking to CNN from Stockholm, Sweden, Edward said that between 70 and 100 people total were kidnapped in that village and others in the same cluster near Tal Tamer in Al Hasakah province.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that ISIS had abducted 90 Assyrians. "Reliable sources" told this London-based monitoring organization that they'd overheard ISIS militants talking on wireless devices about having detained "56 crusaders" in Tal Shamiram alone.
Not far away in the village of Ghibsh, ISIS executed two citizens for "dealing with the Kurds," the Syrian Observatory reported. Syrian Kurdish fighters -- who are part of the People's Protection Units, or YPG, and affiliated with Kurdish fighters out of Iraq -- are among those battling the Islamist extremist group.

About 700 Assyrian families have managed to escape the onslaught, with 600 of them taking up refuge in St. Mary's Cathedral in al-Hasakah, Syria, Edward said. There and elsewhere, Assyrians lack food, water, blankets and other necessities, not to mention security from being in the middle of a years-long civil war.

"They are facing a possible massacre by the (Syrian) regime and by ISIS," Edward said. "Everyone is fighting everyone else. They are surrounded."