BEIRUT (AP) - Islamic State militants have moved a large group of Christians they abducted to one of their strongholds as fighting raged on Wednesday between the extremists and Kurdish and Christian militiamen for control of a chain of villages along a strategic river in northeastern Syria, activists and state-run media said.
The Khabur River in Hassakeh province, which borders Turkey and Iraq, has become the latest battleground in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria. It is predominantly Kurdish but also has populations of Arabs and predominantly Christian Assyrians and Armenians.
In pre-dawn attacks, the IS on Monday attacked communities nestled along the river, seizing at least 70 people, including many women and children. Thousands of others fled to safer areas.
The fate of those kidnapped, almost all of them Assyrian Christians, remained unclear Wednesday, two days after they were seized. Relatives of the group searched frantically for word on the fate of the loved ones, but none came.
"It's a tragedy. ... It is true what they say: history repeats itself," said Younan Talia, a high ranking official with the Assyrian Democratic Organization.
He was referring to the 1933 massacre by Iraqi government forces of Assyrians in Simele, a town in northern Iraq, after which the community fled to the Khabur region, and massacres against Armenian and Assyrian Christians under the Ottoman empire.
State-run SANA news agency and the Assyrian Network for Human Rights in Syria said the hostages have been moved to the Islamic State-controlled city of Shaddadeh, south of the city of Hassakeh. The United States and a coalition of regional partners are conducting a campaign of airstrikes against the group, and have on occasion struck Shaddadeh, a predominantly Arab town.
"In addition to its strategy of terrifying people, taking hostages to use as human shields to protect from coalition airstrikes is another of its goals," said Osama Edward, director of the Stockholm-based Assyrian Network for Human Rights in Syria.
The mass abduction added to fears among religious minorities in both Syria and Iraq, who have been repeatedly targeted by the Islamic State group. During the group's bloody campaign in both countries, where it has declared a self-styled caliphate, minorities have been repeatedly targeted and killed, driven from their homes, had their women enslaved and places of worship destroyed.
The Assyrians are indigenous Christian people who trace their roots back to the ancient Mesopotamians.