The general commander of the majority Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) accused Turkish soldiers and their allies Thursday of “occupying Christian villages” in northern Syria, where Turkish officials claimed this week their military operation had ended.
Middle Eastern Women’s Coalition director Nahren Anweya on Wednesday warned Americans who visit Minnesota’s 5th district, Rep. Ilhan Omar’s district, the 2016 “terrorist recruitment capital of the country.”
The number of Assyrians now living in the United States and Mexico after being forced out of the cradle of Christianity in and around Iraq by Islamic extremists may soon exceed the number of their counterparts living at home, according to author Eric Metaxas.
Turkey’s Syriac Orthodox Church, one of the world’s most ancient Christian communities and considered the oldest indigenous minority in Turkey, reportedly fears extinction under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s hardline Islamist rule.
Iraqi military officials uncovered a trove of over one hundred artifacts that experts have traced back to the Nimrud archaeological site at the former home of an Islamic State terrorist leader in eastern Mosul.
Iraqi militia groups supported by Iran have been seizing Christian property in Baghdad, including homes, businesses, and churches, in a process described as “ethnic cleansing” by Iraqi Christian community leaders.
Multiple reports have indicated that the Kurdish Democratic Union Party’s militia (YPG) in northern Syria attacked the Assyrian Christians in the region, leaving several people dead.
A group of 50 Syriac Christian females have decided to pick up arms and fight against the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL).
While nominally working against a common enemy—the Islamic State (ISIS)—the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a U.S.-designated terrorist group, has occupied a number of Christian Assyrian villages in Iraq. The Marxist group has also invaded a home owned by a commander of the anti-ISIS Christian militia Dwekh Nawsha.
The first stories about ISIS desecrating churches and turning them into torture chambers, where Christians were slaughtered or forced to convert to Islam, began surfacing at the end of 2014. A new report from Christian Freedom International found the persecution of Christians was even more brutal and widespread than believed, with centuries-old Christian communities across the Islamic State war zone completely wiped out.
The onslaught of ISIS in central Syria is threatening yet another Christian town, prompting human-rights activists to warn that hundreds of families could be in peril.
The Assyrian Christian community has already suffered greatly at the hands of ISIS, driven from their homes in the Nineveh Plain to find shelter in Iraqi Kurdistan. Human rights groups have already expressed concern about the dangerous conditions in these refugee camps, including brutal temperature extremes and supply shortages. Now the Assyrians face a new menace: Turkish bombs.
An Assyrian Christian teenager from Iraq is hoping to find asylum in the United States to avoid returning to her village in northern Iraq, which has been captured by ISIS–its church destroyed and slavers from the savage terror state on the prowl for young girls to kidnap.
Eye for an eye, reap what you sow, what goes around comes around: choose your favorite aphorism for the wheel of karma turning, as the Christian Post relays a report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights about a Syrian Christian fighter beheading an ISIS militant. The veracity of this report has been challenged by the Catholic bishop of Aleppo.
The Assyrian monks at Saint Matthew’s Monastery in the Nineveh Plains told the world they will not leave, even though the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) creeps closer to their home. The monks regularly hear battles down the mountain.
The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) is on the doorstep of Palmyra, another UNESCO World Heritage Site in Syria. Officials warn if ISIS is not stopped, they will destroy another important historic city as they expand the caliphate.
As if on safari, the hunters proudly display their dead prey. But the circa 1915 photograph depicts an undeniable horror. The hunters flank a dozen or so human bodies, laid out upon a dirt mound. The distinctive hunters’ uniforms identify them as Turkish soldiers of the Ottoman Empire; their victims are Armenian Christians.
The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) released a video to flaunt an Assyrian Christian man who allegedly converted to Islam. Analysts believe he is one of the 220 Assyrian Christians ISIS kidnapped in Syria in February.
ISIS believes “ancient relics promote idolatry that violates their fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law.”
A community in northeast Syria inhabited primarily by Assyrian Christians has been under steady assault by ISIS for the past 18 days, and they are barely holding on, according to Rima Tuezuen of the Syriac European Union. When the attack first began on February 23rd, ISIS abducted hundreds of Christian prisoners, only 23 of whom have been released so far.
The European Parliament passed a resolution on Thursday calling for the protection of Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities in the Middle East from the depredations of the Islamic State. A call for the establishment of safe havens for ethnic and religious minorities in the Nineveh Plains is part of the resolution.
The Assyrian International News Agency reports that four more Assyrian captives taken by the Islamic State during raids on their villages in Syria have been released.
The Assyrian International News Agency reports a dash of good news from the bubbling cauldron of horror that is the Islamic State.
USA Today reports on the efforts of Assyrian Christians to put their own army together and fend off the Islamic State, which has been raiding Assyrian communities in the Nineveh Plains, taking hundreds of women and children for use as hostages and slaves.
The latest ISIS terror video is apparently running behind schedule—it was supposed to be released on Wednesday—but all indications are that it will include a threat to murder their Christian hostages, including women and children, if the bombing campaign against the Islamic State is not halted.
Around 4:00 in the morning on Monday, February 23rd, an estimated 1500 ISIS fighters attacked a series of Christian towns in northeast Syria, burning churches, taking as many as 90 hostages, and forcing hundreds to flee from their homes.
When one hears a story of Western civilians heading to the Middle East to volunteer for combat duty, one thinks of the hideously successful ISIS recruiting drive. However, as Reuters reports, “a handful of idealistic Westerners are enlisting” with a Christian militia group called Dwekh Nawsha, “citing frustration their governments are not doing more to combat the ultra-radical Islamists or prevent the suffering of innocents.”
The savage Muslim persecution of Assyrian Christians and Yazidi (Zoroastrian/Hindus) by Sunni Muslims in the Middle East and in Shiite Iran has reached fever-pitch. ISIS has systematically murdered, tortured, captured, and enslaved Yazidi girls and women. They have done likewise to the Assyrians in Syria and Iraq. Iran has persecuted Assyrians as well.
The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Revolutionary Court interrupted Christmas when officers raided the home of an Assyrian pastor in Tehran and arrested everyone in attendance. Pastor Victor Bet-Tamarz and another man remain under arrest; the others were reportedly freed.
