Assyrians living on the banks of the Khabur River in the north-eastern part of Syria are being targeted by extremists. A boy has been killed. “We feel abandoned” says Archbishop Hindo.
Christians in Syria are still being targeted by ISIS. In the early hours of Monday morning, February 23, more than 40 pick-up tucks carrying jihadist militants, members of the self-styled Islamic State (IS), attacked a number of Christian Assyrian villages on the Khabur River in the north-eastern Syrian province of Jazira. The jihadists took dozens of Assyrian Christians hostage, churches in some villages were torched or vandalised. This was confirmed to Catholic news agency Fides by the Syrian-Catholic Archbishop of Hassaké-Nisibi, Jacques Behnan Hindo.
“The terrorists first attacked the village of Tel Tamar, said the archbishop, then they took Tel Shamiran and all the many smaller villages as far as Tel Hermuz, where they set fire to everything. In Tel Hormuz and at Tel Shamiran they took dozens of hostages, with the intention perhaps of using them for obtaining a ransom or for an exchange of prisoners. Yesterday evening, at 9:30pm Kurd fighters told us they had managed to take control of Tel Hormuz, with the help of Syrian Christian battalions. However as yet we have no confirmation of this news.” According to Archimandrite Emanuel Youkhana of Christian Aid Program Nohadra-Iraq, whose statements were reported by the association Aid to the Church in Need, a 17-year-old boy called Milad has apparently been martyred and killed.
“According to Archbishop Hindo, this jihadist attack brought to light deplorable conduct on the part of other persons: “I wish to say quite clearl, the archbishop affirms, that we have the feeling of being abandoned into the hands of those ISIS. Yesterday American bombers flew over the area several times, but without taking action. We have a hundred Assyrian families who have taken refuge in Hassakè, but they have received no assistance either from the Red Crescent or from Syrian government aid workers, perhaps because they are Christians. The UN high commission for Refugees is nowhere to be seen.”
The Chaldean Auxiliary Bishop of Baghdad and Patriarchal Vicar, Mgr. Shlemon Warduni, shared similar views in a statement to SIR, the news agency of the Italian Bishop's Conference: "Sadly, I am not suprised by what is going on in Syria, in the Assyrian Christian villages in the Khabur region. The whole world knows who the IS are, the Islamic State is committing horrible and unthinkable acts against justice and humanity. So I ask myself: where is the international community?" "I hope from the bottom of my heart that the people the IS has taken hostage will not be killed," Wardumi concluded. "The Lord has placed them in that land so that they may become the salt and light of the world and not in order for them to be brutally killed. Let us pray that the Lord gives them faith and courage in this difficult moment but also that he opens the minds of these barbarians."
“Along the banks of the River Khabur, perennial affluent of the Euphrates, there more than 30 Christian villages established in the 1930s, a safe haven for Assyrian and Chaldean Christians fleeing Iraq and the massacres perpetrated by the Iraqi army at that time. These villages were flourishing, each with a population of thousands, with churches and active communities running schools and social initiatives. But with the onset of war most had become empty and some were more like ghost towns. Tel Hormuz, which before the war counted some 4 thousand inhabitants, had dwindled in recent months to less than three hundred.”
