WUNRN
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/02/monitor-90-christians-abducted-isil-syria-150224083452197.html
Syria – Massive Assault on
Aramean Christian Villages in Syria – Women & Children Captives
On 23 February, ISIS attacked
the largely Aramean Christian villages of Tel Hormuz, Tel Shamiram, Tel Riman,
Tel Nasra, al-Agibash, Toma Yalda and al-Hauz in the western countryside of the
Hasakah province in north-eastern Syria.
ISIS massacred a number of
Arameans, took hundreds of women and children captive, burned dozens of houses and torched one of Syria’s
ancient churches in the village of Tel Hormuz.
Following the attack at
approximately 4.30 a.m., Aramean Christian and Kurdish Muslim defense forces
mobilized themselves to withstand a further ISIS onslaught and to attempt to
liberate the fallen villages. In the process, they seized a number of
terrorists, which ISIS now demands to exchange with the over 100 Aramean men
taken hostage in the villages, threatening to kill them if this demand is not
met.
Given the fierce movement of
ISIS fighters from their self-proclaimed capital, Raqqah, the Syrian army is
helping the Christian and Kurdish villages along the Khabur River, nearby the
large village of Tel Tamar. Recently, the fighting flared up in this area as
the inhabitants of these Aramean villages have continued to observe ISIS
terrorists encroaching further and further onto their lands.
Locals believe that the next
step of ISIS is to take down the strategically important village of Tel Tamar,
which houses over 10.000 Arameans and is close to Ras al-Ayn. ISIS would thus
create a doorway towards the Turkish border that could facilitate the
procurement of both weapons and mercenaries through Turkey into Syria. As ISIS
moved into the region, residents of the impacted Khabur River area claimed to
have seen fighter jets of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition flying over the
countryside. Unfortunately, this did not prevent the massive attack on the
Aramean Christian population as reports suggest that the terrorists were not
attacked at all by the US-led coalition.
In the last decade, similar genocidal attacks against the Aramean people have occurred in Syria and Iraq. They are easy targets in their homeland, where they suffer from killings, rapes, pillaging, kidnappings and expulsions. Most of their ancestral lands have already been emptied. Soon there will be very few Aramean Christians left in Syria and Iraq. Just today, again hundreds of Arameans from neighboring areas of the Khabur area were evacuated by buses to safer places in the region.