Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) militants have abducted at least 90 Christian men, women and children from a cluster of villages in northeastern Syria, according to reports received by human rights activists on Tuesday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that ISIS militants seized members of the Assyrian community, a Christian minority sect, during a series of dawn raids centering on the town of Tal Tamr and neighboring villages.
Another group, the Syriac National Council of Syria, said that it had verified at least 150 people missing who were kidnapped in the raids.
The abductions occurred as Kurdish Peshmerga forces, backed by U.S. airstrikes, have waged a campaign against ISIS strongholds in northern Syria, forcing ISIS militants back by at least 3 miles, according to Peshmerga commanders and activists on the ground.
Islamist militants swearing allegiance to ISIS beheaded an estimated 21 Coptic Christians in Libya earlier this month.
Read next: ISIS Uses Social Media to Lure British Muslim Girls, Think Tank Says
Get The Brief. Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now.
Listen to the most important stories of the day.
- How to Help Victims of the Texas School Shooting
- TIME's 100 Most Influential People of 2022
- What the Buffalo Tragedy Has to Do With the Effort to Overturn Roe
- Column: The U.S. Failed Miserably on COVID-19. Canada Shows It Didn't Have to Be That Way
- N.Y. Will Soon Require Businesses to Post Salaries in Job Listings. Here's What Happened When Colorado Did It
- The 46 Most Anticipated Movies of Summer 2022
- ‘We Are in a Moment of Reckoning.’ Amanda Nguyen on Taking the Fight for Sexual Violence Survivors to the U.N.
