IS kidnaps 230 civilians in central Syria: Monitor

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the civilians were taken on Thursday in the town of al-Qaryatain, which IS seized the previous day.

"Daesh kidnapped at least 230 people, including at least 60 Christians, during a sweep through al-Qaryatain," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said, using another name for IS.

Amnesty International condemned the abductions as highlighting the suffering of civilians in the more than four-year-old Syrian conflict in which more than 240,000 people have been killed, according to the latest UN figures released yesterday. 

"The abhorrent abduction in Syria of more than 200 people by Islamic State highlights the dreadful plight of civilians caught up in the conflict in the country," said Neil Sammonds, Amnesty’s Syria researcher.

"The group must respect the rules of war and immediately release these civilians unharmed."

Bishop Matta al-Khoury, secretary at the Syriac Orthodox patriarchate in Damascus, told AFP he could not confirm what had happened in the town "because it's very hard to reach residents now".

"But we know that when IS entered the town, it forced some people into house arrest... to use them as human shields" against government airstrikes, Khoury said, urging IS to let the families leave the city. 

Al-Qaryatain lies at the crossroads between IS territory in the eastern countryside of Homs and areas further west in the Qalamoun area. 

It had a pre-war population of 18,000, including Sunni Muslims and around 2,000 Syriac Catholics and Orthodox Christians.

A Syrian Christian who lives in Damascus but is originally from al-Qaryatain told AFP the town's Christian population had dropped to only 300.

But he stressed that Christians and Muslims were coexisting peacefully in the town.

According to Khoury, only 180 Christians were left in al-Qaryatain by Thursday night.

Abdel Rahman told AFP that those abducted were wanted by IS for "collaborating with the regime," and their names were on a list used by the militants as they swept through the town. 

They included Christians who had fled Aleppo province to the north in search of safety in al-Qaryatain. 

Families who tried to flee or hide were tracked down and taken by the militants, he said.

As IS continued its advance on the nearby villages of Sadad, Wahmin, and Houranin, hundreds of Christians began fleeing towards the provincial capital of Homs province, Abdel Rahman added. 

In May, masked men abducted Syrian priest Jacques Mourad from the Syriac Catholic Mar Elian monastery in al-Qaryatain, near the IS-held ancient city of Palmyra. 

Mourad, who was known to help both Christians and Muslims, was preparing aid for an influx of refugees from Palmyra.

In late February, IS abducted 220 Assyrian Christians from villages in Syria's northeastern province of Hasakeh. At least 19 were released when ransoms were paid.