Daesh terrorists release 22 Assyrian Christian captives in Syria: Sources

The Takfiri Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group has released 22 Assyrian Christians whom it had kidnapped in Syria’s northeast nearly six months ago, sources say.

The former hostages included 14 women, the Assyrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the fate of the Assyrian Christians in Syria, said on Tuesday, adding that their freedom was “the result of the tireless efforts and negotiations by the Assyrian Church of the East in the city of Hasakah.”

Some observers believe, however, that the captives were freed because they may have been a burden on the terror group due to their old age or health issues.

The freed Assyrians were among some 210 members of the Christian minority who were abducted by Daesh in February as it overran the Khabur region in the northeastern Syrian province of Hasakah.

A second monitoring group, the Assyrian Network for Human Rights, said those released were from the villages of Tal Shamiram and Tal Jazira in Khabur.

The network’s director, Osama Edward, said negotiations were underway in a bid to liberate the remaining hostages held by ISIL.

With a population of about 30,000 among Syria’s 1.2 million Christians, Assyrians lived mostly in 35 villages in Hasakah before the beginning of the 2011 crisis in the Arab country. The Daesh terrorists seized many of their villages in February, but Kurdish forces later drove the terrorists out of all those areas.

Daesh, which currently controls parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq, has been carrying out horrific acts of violence such as public decapitations and crucifixions against all ethnic and religious communities in the areas under its control.

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