Danger levels rose sharply in late April for northeast Syria’s isolated Assyrian Christians, caught for nearly three months between Kurdish militias and Syrian army forces battling with militants of the self-proclaimed Islamic State for control of Hassaka province.
‘We are going through a terrible moment’, Syriac Catholic Archbishop Jacques Behnan Hindo told Fides News on 30 April. ‘The jihadists of the Islamic State attacked Hassaka for two days. They were warded off by the [Syrian] army and Kurdish militias. But we are cut off, like an island surrounded by jihadists from all sides.’
Forced out
Some 1,000 Assyrian families had been forced out of their village homes along the Khabur River by Islamic State in late February, sending them into exile in Qamishli and Hassaka city.
