ISIS terrorists kidnapped as many as 100 Assyrian Christians — most of them women and children — after overrunning a string of villages in northeastern Syria, activists and relatives said Tuesday.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the jihadis carried out dawn raids on remote rural villages inhabited by the ancient Christian minority west of Hasaka, a city largely held by Kurds.
At least four guards were killed and several churches torched as the hostages were snatched, while as many as 3,000 other terrified members of the embattled minority fled to neighboring towns to escape the terrorists.
Panicked relatives feared the hostages could be used as human shields or massacred outright — the same fate other religious minorities have met after being snatched by the Islamist fanatics, including 21 Coptic Christians who were executed in Libya.
“Land lines have been cut, their mobile [phones] are closed,” an Assyrian Christian woman living in Beirut, Lebanon, said about her parents, brother, his wife and their children.
“Have they been slaughtered? Are they still alive? We’re searching for any news,” she said, her voice breaking.
In New York, meanwhile, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said security had been beefed up after threats by the al Qaeda-linked al-Shabab against US shopping malls.
With Post Wires