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Islamic State now holds 220 Syrian Christians hostage

By Danielle Haynes

DAMASCUS, Syria, Feb. 26 (UPI) -- The Islamic State has kidnapped 220 Syrian Christians over the course of three days, a human rights group said.

The terror group began abducting the ethnic Assyrian men, women and children Monday during the raids on 11 villages in the Tal Tamir countryside in al-Hasakah province of northeast Syria, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights group said. Two churches in the region were torched as part of the raids and IS took control of 10 villages.

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The number of captured could be up to 280, one activist told the BBC.

Negotiations were taking place between an Assyrian leader and mediators from Arabian tribes, the human rights group said. Some 1,000 Assyrian families have fled their homes in the wake of the kidnappings.

The northeast region of Syria is strategically important as it borders both Turkey and Iraq.

Assyrian Christians in the Nineveh Plains in Iraq, near Mosul, have been training recently with Sons of Liberty International, a non-profit group, to combat the Islamic State. Named the Nineveh Plains Protection Unit (NPU), the group consists of a battalion 350 to 500 Assyrian men, as reported by The Clarion-Ledger.

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"We have rights to defend our land and to preserve our holy land, and to preserve our habits and traditions," NPU official Kaldo Oghanna said. "We will not convert to the jihadis."

Assyrians are a semitic, Christian ethnic group that resides mostly in Iraq, Syria and Turkey. About 1.5 million Assyrians live in Iraq.

The Assyrian Church of the East, officially named the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East, was established in 33 A.D.

Sons of Liberty International said it provides free military training, support and security services to those who need it.

"Recognizing the failure of the international community and governments to adequately protect the defenseless and support those struggling for freedom around the world, SOLI founder Matthew VanDyke realized the need for rapid on-the-ground action to help those whom the international system had failed," the organization's website states.

Andrew V. Pestano contributed to this report.

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