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ISIS abducts 220 Assyrian Christians

Jihadi John unmasked?

AFP, Beirut
Islamic State group jihadists have abducted 220 Assyrian Christians in northeastern Syria in recent days, a monitoring group said yesterday, as international concern grows for the minority group.
The kidnappings - more than twice as many as previously reported - have prompted thousands more Christians to flee their homes to avoid being captured by
the Sunni Muslim extremists, activists said.
"No fewer than 220 Assyrian citizens were abducted by ISIS over the past three days from 11 villages" in Hasakeh province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
■Negotiations are under way through mediators from Arab tribes and a member of the Assyrian community to secure the release of the hostages," the Britain-based
monitoring group said.
Many of the abductees are said to be women, children or elderly.
They were taken as ISIS stormed several Assyrian villages under the control of Kurdish and Christian forces.
The Observatory said 14 Kurdish fighters and three members of an Assyrian defence organisation had been killed in three days of fighting for the villages.
The United States and United Nations denounced the mass abduction of Christians - the first of its kind in the war-torn country - and demanded their release.
"ISIL's latest targeting of a religious minority is only further testament to its brutal and inhumane treatment of all those who disagree with its divisive goals and toxic beliefs," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, using another acronym for ISIS.
The UN Security Council also condemned the abductions, demanding the hostages be immediately and unconditionally freed.
Osama Edward, director of the Assyrian Human Rights Network, told AFP on Wednesday he believed the abductions were linked to the jihadists' recent loss of ground in the face of US-led air raids.
“They took the hostages to use them as human shields," he said.
The jihadists, who are battling Kurdish fighters on the ground, may try to exchange the Assyrians for ISIS prisoners, he said.
The kidnappings and assault by ISIS on several Assyrian villages in Hasakeh prompted thousands of members of the community to flee.
Many sought refuge in Qamishli, a large city in the province that is controlled by Kurdish and regime forces.
"We've received around 200 families who are being hosted in local homes," Jean Tolo of Qamishli's Assyrian Organisation for Relief and Development, told AFP.
“The people arriving are desperate.
They are coming with nothing, they left everything behind."
Meanwhile, "Jihadi John", the masked Islamic State militant apparently responsible for beheading Western hostages, was named yesterday as Kuwaiti-born London computer programmer Mohammed Emwazi by experts and the media.
The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at London’s King's College, a leading resource for studying foreign jihadists, said it believed the identity "to be accurate andcorrect".
Cage, a civil rights group that was in contact with Emwazi for two years over his alleged harassment by British security services, said the man bore "striking similarities" to the hooded militant.
Cage's research director Asim Qureshi told a Washington Post reporter that due to the hood "there was no way he could be 100 percent certain," the campaign group said in a statement.
The New York Times quoted a senior British security official saying that Emwazi had been identified by the government "some time ago" but the name had not been disclosed "for operational reasons”.
But London's Metropolitan Police would not confirm a report that first appeared in the Washington Post, which identified the suspect as Emwazi, who grew up in west London after moving to Britain aged six.
"We are not going to confirm the identity of anyone at this stage," Richard Walton, head of the police Counter Terrorism Command, said in a statement.
Contacted by AFP, the interior ministry could not immediately comment on the reports.
Emwazi, believed to be in his mid-208, was identified to the Post by friends and others familiar with the case, with one close acquaintance telling the paper: "I have no doubt that Mohammed is Jihadi John".