BEIRUT — Islamic State terrorists in eastern Syria have captured at least 70 Assyrian Christians — including many women and children — in one of the largest recent abductions against religious minorities by the terrorist organization, watchdog groups said Tuesday.
The Islamic State said it was holding “tens of crusaders” — a term it often uses to describe Christians — but other details were not clear.
The incident represents another blow to the Middle East’s besieged Christian communities, which have dwindled dramatically in recent years because of attacks by Islamist terrorists and others.
It also is the latest onslaught against religious minorities by the Islamic State, whose previous targets have included Yazidis in northern Iraq, who were taken captive and killed in much larger numbers last year.
The Assyrian captives could become bargaining chips as the Islamic State seeks to hold strategic ground linking its territory in Syria and Iraq. Some members of the embattled Assyrian Christian community — a group dating to biblical times — have taken up arms against the Islamic State.
But the Islamic State also has wreaked quick vengeance on those who fall into its hands. A video released this month showed the beheadings of 20 Egyptian Coptic Christians and a Ghanaian Christian held hostage in Libya by a branch of the Islamic State.
Syria’s oil-rich eastern region has been a key battleground against the terrorist group, which has faced repeated airstrikes from a U.S.-led international coalition. But the abductions, reportedly carried out during raids on villages, suggest some advances or retrenching by the terrorists.
As many as 90 people from the Assyrian Christian community were taken from villages in Syria’s northeastern province of Hasakah, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that monitors the civil war.
Another group that chronicles abuses by the Islamic State posted on its Face book account that 70 people were abducted from villages near the town of Tal Tamr, citing figures obtained by Assyrian activists.
The reason for the discrepancy in the number is unclear, but the abductions coincide with intense clashes about 60 miles to the east of Tal Tamr between the Islamic State and Syrian Kurdish fighters.
