West Has 'Betrayed the Christians of the East,' Says Syrian Patriarch

 

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

The head of the Syrian Catholic Church, Mar Ignace Youssif III Youan, has said the West has betrayed Syrians and caused an endless conflict in the country.

Speaking to Le Messenger, an Egpytian Catholic magazine, Youan spoke passionately about the "chaos" that Western governments have caused by ignoring the advice of Syrians, assuming that Assad's regime could be destroyed in a few months, and now having faith in airstrikes as the answer when ISIS has thoroughly infiltrated Iraq, Syria and beyond.

"We Christians are not able to live in this chaos," the Syrian Patriarch said. "The West has betrayed us."

The patriarch accused Western governments of wanting to "perpetuate the endless conflict in Syria" and of having "betrayed the Christians of the East. We explained from the beginning that our situation was different from that of other nations in the region, they were not listened to. And now we mourn deaths over the past five years. "

He described the current situation in Syria as "dramatic, and all the Syrian people are living in pain" as they are trapped under the regime of ISIS and other terrorist groups "who use Islam as an excuse to 'purify' areas under their control in the name of religion, and Muslim scholars who tell us that Islam is alien to these facts.

"It's a shame that the West has abandoned Christians to this situation," he said.

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West Has 'Betrayed the Christians of the East,' Says Syrian Patriarch

ISIS Genocide Victims Do Not Include Christians, the State Department Is Poised to Rule

 

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

A report by a renowned journalist states that Christians are to be excluded from an impending official United States government declaration of ISIS genocide. If true, it would reflect a familiar pattern within the administration of a politically correct bias that views Christians -- even non-Western congregations such as those in Iraq and Syria -- never as victims but always as Inquisition-style oppressors. (That a State Department genocide designation for ISIS may be imminent was acknowledged last week in congressional testimony, by Ambassador Anne Patterson, the assistant secretary of the State Department's Near East Bureau.)

Yazidis, according to the story by investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, are going to be officially recognized as genocide victims, and rightly so. Yet Christians, who are also among the most vulnerable religious minority groups that have been deliberately and mercilessly targeted for eradication by ISIS, are not. This is not an academic matter. A genocide designation would have significant policy implications for American efforts to restore property and lands taken from the minority groups and for offers of aid, asylum, and other protections to such victims. Worse, it would mean that, under the Genocide Convention, the United States and other governments would not be bound to act to suppress or even prevent the genocide of these Christians.

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ISIS Genocide Victims Do Not Include Christians, the State Department Is Poised to Rule

A Future for Minorities in the Middle East?

The Arabic letter "n" (inside red circle), signifying "Nasrani" (Christian), on an Assyrian home in Mosul.

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

(AINA) -- Consider this imaginary situation. Hundreds of British citizens are kidnapped while travelling in the Middle East by a Muslim jihadi militia. The kidnappers hold the victims in an unknown and lawless location in a failed state and demand a ransom of one million dollars per person for their release. When no ransom is forthcoming, the kidnappers take three males, dress them in orange jumpsuits, make them kneel and, after they say their names, they are shot in the back of the head while being filmed. The kidnappers then threaten to similarly execute the remaining captives if the ransom is not paid.

Consider another imaginary scenario. Some 5000 American women and girls are kidnapped by the same Muslim jihadi militia. They are turned into sex slaves, servicing the jihadi soldiers who consider the whole process to be an act of worship of their God. The women are sold for a few dollars in open markets and are subjected to an ongoing nightmare of exploitation, humiliation and terror.

If both of the above imaginary situations came to pass, it is highly likely that the British and American governments would bring the full force of their military power to bear on the perpetrators of such mediaeval barbarism. And they would be right to act in the interests of their citizens in this way, providing the protection that governments should provide to their own.

The subtext in the above scenarios is that in fact the situations described are going on as we speak. The hundreds of citizens who have been put up for ransom, with some being killed on camera, are not British but rather Assyrians, kidnapped in February from dozens of predominantly Christian towns and villages in the Khabur river valley in northern Syria. The exorbitant ransom demanded is far beyond the financial capacity of the local Assyrian community.

The thousands of women and girls, some pre-pubescent, serving as sex slaves are not Americans but mostly non-Muslim Yazidis, kidnapped in Sinjar in northern Iraq late last year. Some Christian women are also being held in the same manner. The perpetrators are, of course, the soldiers and leaders of the Islamic State, who have established rules of trade that include allowing an individual jihadi to purchase up to three female concubines. The captured woman are reportedly considered by their captors to have become Muslim if they are raped by ten ISIS fighters.

The significant difference between the above imaginary situations and the reality is that neither Assyrians nor Yazidis are citizens of powerful nations. Those currently held in captivity cannot hope for their armed compatriots to come to their rescue. In such a context, their nightmare must be even darker and full of greater despair, enveloped within a sense of absolute hopelessness. It is little wonder that a number of the Yazidi women are committing suicide, according to reports provided by some lucky women who have escaped their captors.

And as these appalling situations continue day after day, leaders of the powerful nations do express concern and meet to confer about ways of gradually "degrading" the capacity of the Islamic State. A group of nine nations led by the USA have been conducting bombing raids from the air on Islamic State targets since August 2014, with mixed results. But while the discussions and the bombing raids take place, days become months and months become years, and the Assyrian and Yazidi hostages remain in their situations of terror, with little hope of rescue.

Two thoughts come to mind. Firstly, the great nations of the world that are mulling over ways of dealing with the Islamic State in a step-by-step fashion would do well to act as if the kidnapped hostages are indeed British and American. Images of British citizens being executed on mass and American women being sold at sex-slave markets may well succeed in breaking the paralysis that has beset Western action over the problem of the Islamic State.

Second, the tragic situation raises the issue of the future viability of religious minorities in the Middle East. The best solution would probably be for Assyrians and Yazidis to migrate to the West. Many will do this, but many will remain in their ancestral homelands.

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A Future for Minorities in the Middle East?

74 children executed by ISIS for 'crimes' that include refusal to fast, report says | Fox News

The following excerpts are from FoxNews.com:

The blood-soaked executioners of ISIS have spared neither women nor children since the jihadist army established its caliphate a year ago, putting an estimated 74 kids and even more women to death for such offenses as practicing “magic” and refusing to fast during Ramadan.

A total of 3,027 people have been executed by ISIS since it declared itself a state under strict Islamic law in Syria and Iraq last June, according to a new report by the UK-based group, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"Many of the charges against those executed are recorded as blasphemy and spying, but others include sorcery, sodomy, practicing as a Shia Muslim," the report states.

Just this week, two children whose ages were not known were crucified in the Mayadin, Deir Ezzor province in eastern Syria after ISIS accused them of not properly fasting during Ramadan. The children’s bodies, put on public display on crossbars, each bore a sign explaining their violation during the holy month for Muslims that runs June 17 to July 17. With each execution justified by ISIS' medieval interpretation of the Koran, the group is attempting to portray itself as the true practitioners of Islam, say experts.

“Underlying all these executions is the apocalypse ideology of the final battle between the believers and the unbelievers,” said Jasmine Opperman, the director of Southern Africa Operations at the Terrorism, Research & Analysis Consortium. “ISIS is using executions to show its followers -- and would-be followers -- that the group is the only true representative of believers, not only in word, but action, which is why executions are featured so prominently.”

Other children died fighting for their lives.

“The violent Islamist group appears to demonstrate a particular interest in children, releasing videos of children fighting in cages and undertaking military training,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights group said. “The report also details moves undertaken by the group to entice children to join, which include setting up offices called "cubs of the caliphate" that recruit children to fight for ISIS.”

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child released a report in February, documenting the many horrors ISIS has imposed on children who are Kurdish, Yazidi, Christian and even Muslim. Children – even those who are mentally challenged – are being tortured, crucified, buried alive, used as suicide bombers and sold as sex slaves, the report said.

“ISIS is hoping to spur current supporters around the world who are dormant, of which there are millions, into joining their caliphate by advertising acts like these, of which there are millions,” said Ryan Mauro, national security analyst for the Clarion Project, a nonprofit organization that educates the public about the threat of Islamic extremism. “They know that they can greatly increase their numbers by appealing to current radicals rather than the broader masses.”

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74 children executed by ISIS for 'crimes' that include refusal to fast, report says | Fox News

Egypt Police Rescue Kidnapped Christians

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

Egyptian police have rescued four Copts who were kidnapped while on their way from a pilgrimage site in Minya province.

Authorities raided an isolated farmhouse in the mountainous area not far from the city of Salamut where the victims were taken away by armed gunmen, the Catholic Fides news agency reported.

Police tracked down the hideout of the kidnappers, who demanded ransom from the victims' families of 600,000 Egyptian pounds ($79,000), at the village of Akoris.

The raiding team stormed the kidnappers' safe house around dawn May 20, and a firefight ensued between authorities and the criminals. Some of the kidnappers managed to escape.

Police found the victims shackled with chains at the farm, and saw indications that they had been tortured by their captors, who waited for ransom to be paid.

The victims said the kidnappers constantly threatened to kill them if their families refused to pay ransom.

Some of the victims even suffered physical abuse as the kidnappers beat them up while waiting for the families to give into their demands.

Three of the victims were adults with ages ranging from 20 to 35 years, while the fourth was a five-year-old child.

The victims had come from the Church of the Virgin Mary in Jabal al-Tair, which was built around 328 A.D. on the orders of Queen Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine.

The church is one of the most popular Marian shrines frequented by the Coptic Christian community in Egypt.

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Egypt Police Rescue Kidnapped Christians

Islamic State Burned a Woman Alive for Not Engaging in an 'extreme' Sex Act

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

Amid all the Islamic State's atrocities -- its massacres of civilians, its beheading of hostages, its pillaging of antiquities -- the systematic violence the jihadists have carried out against countless enslaved women and girls never fails to shock. For months now, we've heard appalling testimony from women who escaped the Islamic State's clutches, many of whom endured rape and other hideous acts of violence.

Zainab Bangura, the U.N.'s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, recently conducted a tour of refugee camps in the shadow of the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, war-ravaged countries where the Islamic State commands swaths of territory. She heard a host of horror stories from victims and their families and recounted them in an interview earlier this week with the Middle East Eye, an independent regional news site.

"They are institutionalizing sexual violence," Bangura said of the Islamic State. "The brutalization of women and girls is central to their ideology."

Bangura detailed the processes by which "pretty virgins" captured by the jihadists were bought and sold at auctions. Here's a chilling excerpt:

After attacking a village, [the Islamic State] splits women from men and executes boys and men aged 14 and over. The women and mothers are separated; girls are stripped naked, tested for virginity and examined for breast size and prettiness. The youngest, and those considered the prettiest virgins fetch higher prices and are sent to Raqqa, the IS stronghold.

There is a hierarchy: sheikhs get first choice, then emirs, then fighters. They often take three or four girls each and keep them for a month or so, until they grow tired of a girl, when she goes back to market. At slave auctions, buyers haggle fiercely, driving down prices by disparaging girls as flat-chested or unattractive.

We heard about one girl who was traded 22 times, and another, who had escaped, told us that the sheikh who had captured her wrote his name on the back of her hand to show that she was his "property."

Estimates vary, but there are believed to be somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 women enslaved by the Islamic State. Many are Yazidis, a persecuted minority sect that the extremist Islamic State considers to be apostate "devil-worshippers," in part because of the Yazidis' ancient connection to the region's pre-Islamic past. The jihadists' treatment of Yazidi women, in particular, has been marked out by its contempt and savagery.

Here's Bangura again:

They commit rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution and other acts of extreme brutality. We heard one case of a 20-year-old girl who was burned alive because she refused to perform an extreme sex act. We learned of many other sadistic sexual acts. We struggled to understand the mentality of people who commit such crimes.

Hundreds of Yazidi women and girls have escaped their captors, either by running away, or being ransomed and rescued by their families. Bangura has urged international assistance in providing proper medical and "psychosocial" support to the escaped women, who have experienced terrible trauma.

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Islamic State Burned a Woman Alive for Not Engaging in an 'extreme' Sex Act

ISIS Demands $23 Million for Assyrian Hostages, Vigil Held in Australia

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

(AINA) -- Assyrian church leader are reporting that ISIS has rejected a ransom offer for the 230 Assyrians it captured on February 23 in the Hasaka province of Syria (AINA 2015-02-23). 253 Assyrians were captured in the initial attacks on the 35 Assyrian villages on the Khabur river. 23 were subsequently released but 230 remain in captivity, including 52 children, 84 females and 95 males.

ISIS has demanded 100,000 US dollars for each hostage, for a total of 23 million.

Leading the negotiations with ISIS is Bishop Mellis of Australia. In an interview with SBS Radio in Australia, Bishop Mellis said:

We are a poor nation. These people have not done anything wrong and won't harm anyone. We as Assyrians do not have this amount of money you are asking for.

We offered an amount of money that we cannot disclose at this time. With the amount we offered, we thought it was acceptable, to have the return of the 230 people

After two days, they (ISIS) told us, "the amount the church offered was not acceptable. From now on, we will no longer negotiate with you.

The hostages have been moved to Raqqa, the ISIS stronghold in Syria, and are now awaiting trial in Islamic court under Sharia law, where a Muslim judge will decide their fate. Desperate church leaders have pleaded for assistance neighboring countries, including Turkey, in securing the release of the Assyrian hostages.

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ISIS Demands $23 Million for Assyrian Hostages, Vigil Held in Australia

Rescued girls not from Chibok, Nigerian military says - CNN.com

Nigerian soldiers walking in the street in the remote north-eastern town of Baga in Borno State. Photograph: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images

The following excerpts are from CNN:

Hotoro, Kano, Nigeria (CNN)Girls rescued from Boko Haram terror camps in Sambisa Forest on Tuesday are "not the Chibok girls," Nigerian Army spokesman Sani Usman said.

However, one official did not rule out that captives from other Boko Haram camps that were raided might include some of the 200 girls abducted in April 2014 from a school in Chibok.

Nigerian troops rescued 200 girls and 93 women Tuesday in the Sambisa Forest in the northeastern part of the country, the Nigerian Armed Forces announced on its official Twitter account. The forest is a stronghold for the militant Boko Haram group and is not far from Chibok.

Military spokesman Maj. Gen. Chris Olukolade said the rescued girls and women are still being screened and none has spoken to their families yet.

The 2014 mass abduction from Chibok led to an international social media movement, #BringBackOurGirls, to rescue them. Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group, has been kidnapping females for years and has hundreds in their custody.

The Tokumbere, Sassa and Tlafa terror camps were raided and destroyed, said a source close to the military. The Tokumbere camp is the most notorious, where the training of small children by Boko Haram is said to have occurred, the source said. Boko Haram terrorists were killed in the operation, but the military did not say how many.

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Rescued girls not from Chibok, Nigerian military says - CNN.com

Senior Female ISIS Recruiter is Student From Seattle

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

A senior female Isis figure who reportedly helped recruit women to join the extremist group in areas under its self-declared caliphate has been exposed as a student from Seattle, who may have been living in the city up until March this year.

The person behind the influential @_UmmWaqqas Twitter account has been revealed by Channel 4 as a woman in her 20s who lived and studied in the US.

Her Twitter account had a following of over 8,000 before it was suspended and shows that British recruits, such as Aqsa Mahmood, and other women from Europe were in contact with her in the days running up their departure. Mahmood goes by the name of 'Umm Layth' online and tweets from the @_UmmWaqqas account...

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Senior Female ISIS Recruiter is Student From Seattle

The Assyrian Genocide As Part of the Christian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire

Of this photo, the United States ambassador wrote, "Scenes like this were common all over the Armenian provinces, in the spring and summer months of 1915. Death in its several forms—massacre, starvation, exhaustion—destroyed the larger part of the refugees. The Turkish policy was that of extermination under the guise of deportation" -- from Morgenthau, Henry (1918). "Ambassador Morgenthau's Story" . Garden City, New York: Doubleday.

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

(AINA) -- The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire is in both historiography and public memory almost solely associated with the murder of the Armenians. Although the Turkish government still denies that the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire fell victim to systematic murder, the extermination of the Armenians is far from being a "forgotten genocide." No book on the history of genocide can omit the case of the Armenians. Unfortunately, achieving the global remembrance of the genocide against the Armenians seems to have downplayed the fate of all other Christian minority groups in the Ottoman Empire such as Assyrians that suffered from ethnic cleansing and mass murder at the hands of the Sultan Abdul Hamid II and Young Turks. Henry Morgenthau, who served as US ambassador in Constantinople until 1916 stated in his memoirs: "The Armenians are not the only subject people in Turkey which have suffered from this policy of making Turkey exclusively the country of the Turks. The story which I have told about the Armenians I could also tell with certain modi about the Greeks and the Syrians...

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The Assyrian Genocide As Part of the Christian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire

Concerning Other Little-known Religious Genocides on the Edge of the News

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

Pope Francis infuriated the government of Turkey by using the word "genocide" leading up to April 24, the 100th anniversary of the start of the mass murder of as many as 1.5 million Armenians in what was then the Ottoman Empire. That atrocity, amid the chaos and rivalries of World War One, is often regarded as the forerunner and inspiration for Nazi efforts to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

In the April 15 issue of The Christian Century, Baylor University historian Philip Jenkins reports on another 2015 centennial that major media have ignored -- the "Sayfo" ("sword" year) memorialized by Christian Assyrians. Among other events, historians will examine this at the Free University of Berlin June 24-28. During that dying era of the empire with its historic Muslim Caliphate, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Greeks were also killed during the "Pontic" ethnic cleansing.

The hatred toward all three Christian groups a century ago finds unnerving echoes in current attacks by Muslim fanatics in the Mideast and Africa, most recently the video beheadings of Ethiopian Christians in Libya. Assyrians are also victimized once again, now by ISIS under its purported restoration of the Caliphate in Syria and Iraq. The Assyrians' story is part of the over-all emptying out of Christianity across the Mideast.

Assyrians have three sectors that differ doctrinally on the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ. The "uniate" Chaldean Catholics loyal to the Pope follow the definition from the A.D. 451 Council of Chalcedon. Two groups do not, the "Nestorians" in the Church of the East, and the monophysite "Oriental Orthodox" (distinct from Eastern Orthodoxy, which adheres to Chalcedon).

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Concerning Other Little-known Religious Genocides on the Edge of the News

50 ISIS Fighters Killed As Kurds Repel Attack on Villages Near Kirkuk

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region -- At least two Peshmarga fighters and some 50 Islamic State (ISIS) militants were killed in fierce clashes Tuesday morning in the ethnically-mixed village of Sahl al-Malih, some 30 kilometers south of Kirkuk city.

Field General Tariq Koyi of the Second Peshmerga Infantry in the area told Rudaw that intense house-to-house clashes took place in the early hours after ISIS militants infiltrated the village overnight.

"As far as I know we have lost two Peshmerga," Koyi said. "But at least four dozen Daesh (ISIS) bodies are in our hands now," he said, adding the situation was now under control.

Another Kurdish military source on the ground, who wished to remain anonymous, told Rudaw that at least 40 militants supported by "some local collaborators" had entered the village at 5 am Tuesday and started to shoot at Peshmerga positions.

Sahl al-Malih has a mixed Kurdish-Arab population. Local Kurdish officials have in the past accused some of the Sunni tribes in the area of collaborating with ISIS.

"The Daesh gunmen were surrounded and after three hours of intense shooting they were all eliminated," the military source said. "The Peshmerga are now in a house-to-house search for the remaining elements in the village." He added that the militants had attacked Peshmerga positions from both inside and outside the village in a surprise assault.

ISIS appears to have intensified attacks on Peshmerga positions in areas close to the key oil city of Kirkuk as an anticipated battle for the ISIS stronghold of Mosul nears.

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50 ISIS Fighters Killed As Kurds Repel Attack on Villages Near Kirkuk

Nearly Half of European Militants in Syria, Iraq Are French

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

Nearly half of European militants known to have traveled to territory held by the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group are French, a report by the country's upper house Senate revealed Wednesday.

Just over 1,430 French people have made their way to Iraq and Syria, representing 47 percent of militants from Europe that are known and accounted for, Senator Jean-Pierre Sueur, who spearheaded a parliamentary probe into militant networks, told reporters.

According to Sueur, French domestic intelligence services are currently monitoring more than 3,000 people suspected of being involved in one way or another in Syrian networks -- a 24-percent increase since November last year.

Some 85 French nationals are thought to have died in ISIS-held zones while two are being held in Syria, the report said.

Of particular concern to intelligence services, some 200 have left to come back to France, prompting fears they may stage attacks mirroring the January 7-9 shooting spree that left 17 dead.

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Nearly Half of European Militants in Syria, Iraq Are French

Outbreak of Chicken Pox, Lice and Scabies in Assyrian Refugee Camp in Arbel

Ankawa Mall, an uncompleted building in Ankawa, Iraq, now housing nearly 1,800 Assyrian refugees. (See more photos from this refugee "camp" below)

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

(AINA) -- Eight months after ISIS drove nearly 200,000 Assyrians from their villages in the Nineveh Plains north of Mosul, Assyrians are now battling disease in the refugee camps they are living in. Refugees are living in uncompleted buildings, with no walls, windows or dividers.

One location, called the Ankawa Mall, is a 7 story building which was never completed. It has open floors on all levels. There are 420 Assyrian families living there, about 1,800 people, mostly from Baghdede (Qaraqosh), Tel Afar and Bertella. According to Fr. Immanuel Callo, there is now an outbreak of chicken pox, lice and scabies in this building.

There a severe water shortage. Six tankers of water, each bringing at least 12,000 liters of water, are purchased daily. $200 per day is spent on the generator for the building.

There is also a critical shortage of bathrooms, with most floors having only 2 or 3.

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Outbreak of Chicken Pox, Lice and Scabies in Assyrian Refugee Camp in Arbel

Islamic State Recruits 400 Children Since January: Syria Monitor

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

(Reuters) -- Islamic State has recruited at least 400 children in Syria in the past three months and given these so-called "Cubs of the Caliphate" military training and hardline indoctrination, a monitoring group said on Tuesday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the children, all aged under 18, were recruited near schools, mosques and in public areas where Islamic State carries out killings and brutal punishments on local people.

One such young boy appeared in a video early this month shooting dead an Israeli Arab accused by Islamic State of being as spy. A French police source said the boy might be the half-brother of Mohamed Merah, who killed three soldiers, a rabbi and three Jewish children in Toulouse in 2012.

"They use children because it is easy to brainwash them. They can build these children into what they want, they stop them from going to school and send them to IS schools instead," said Rami Abdulrahman, head of the British-based Observatory.

Islamic State declared a caliphate last year in territory it controls in Syria and Iraq and is being targeted by U.S.-led air strikes in both countries.

It has beheaded or shot dead Syrian civilians, combatants, foreign aid workers and journalists and has released videos appearing to show children witnessing or participating in some of the killings. The group persecutes people across sects and ethnicities who do not adhere to its ultra-hardline doctrine.

The group may be resorting to children because it has been having difficulties recruiting adults since the start of the year, with only 120 joining its ranks, Abdulrahman said.

This was partly due to tighter controls on the Turkish border, where foreign fighters tend to enter, he added.

Islamic State has encouraged parents to send children to training camps or has recruited them without their parents' consent, often luring them with money, said the Observatory, which tracks the conflict using sources on the ground.

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Islamic State Recruits 400 Children Since January: Syria Monitor

Report Says Nearly 650,000 Besieged in Syria

Assyrian Christians fleeing advancing Islamic State jihadists in the Syrian province of Hasakeh
(Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images)

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

Nearly 650,000 Syrians are living in besieged communities in the country's civil war, more than three times the UN estimate, according to a new report that gives a graphic account of hundreds of deaths in areas the world has struggled for years to reach.

The report says Syria's government is responsible for the siege tactics that have led to deaths by starvation, dehydration and the lack of medical care. The document does not look at what it calls the short-term siege tactics used by Islamic State, which has beheaded and massacred its opponents in the area straddling the Syria-Iraq border currently under its control.

The "Slow Death" report, obtained in advance by Associated Press, is by the Syrian American Medical Society, which supports medical workers in besieged areas. The organisation presented its findings on Thursday to UN officials and to a closed-door meeting sponsored by the United States, Britain, France and other states and organised by Qatar.

The UN estimates that 212,000 Syrians live in besieged areas beyond the reach of humanitarian aid. But the new report, to be released next week, says the UN is too narrowly defining "besieged" and is inadvertently underplaying the crisis. It says more than 640,200 people are besieged. It also echoes claims by an increasing number of aid groups that the international response to the overall conflict, particularly by the deeply divided UN Security Council, has failed.

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Report Says Nearly 650,000 Besieged in Syria

Christians in the Middle East May Be Getting More International Support - Aleteia

The following excerpts are from aleteia.org:

A flurry of international advocacy for Christians under siege in the Middle East has been complemented this week by intensified prayer on their behalf, as Syria marks four years of civil war and a Vatican official spoke in support of the use of force in the region.

Aid to the Church in Need asked Pope Francis to extend his 24 hours of worldwide Eucharistic Adoration on March 13-14 by one day — to March 15 — to pray with the Christians of Syria and the Middle East for an end to violence and war in the region.

On Wednesday, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on the international coalition to do more to prevent abductions of minorities, such as the hostage-taking of hundreds of Assyrian Christians in northeastern Syria. The resolution also supported the concept of a safe haven for Christians and others at risk in parts of Iraq.

And on Friday, the Holy See, together with the Russian Federation and Lebanon, presented a declaration in support of Christians and members of other communities in the Middle East. The statement from the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations in Geneva was presented during the assembly of the 28th Session of the UN’s Human Rights Council, reported Vatican Radio.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s representative in Geneva, in an interview with Crux's John Allen after the presentation, called for a coordinated international force to stop the “so-called Islamic State” in Syria and Iraq from further assaults on Christians and other minority groups.

“We have to stop this kind of genocide,” said Archbishop Tomasi. “Otherwise we’ll be crying out in the future about why we didn’t so something, why we allowed such a terrible tragedy to happen.”

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Christians in the Middle East May Be Getting More International Support - Aleteia

Iraqi Kurds say ISIS used chemical weapons against troops | Fox News

The following excerpts are from FoxNews.com:

Iraqi Kurdish authorities said Saturday that their troops are being attacked by Islamic State fighters using chemical weapons.

The Kurdish Regional Security Council released a statement saying it has evidence showing the ISIS fighters used chlorine gas as a chemical weapon against Kurdish military forces known as peshmerga fighters.

The council said the alleged chemical attack took place on a road between Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, and the Syrian border, as forces fought to seize a vital supply line used by the Sunni militants. It said its fighters later found "around 20 gas canisters" that had been loaded onto the truck involved in the attack.

Video provided by the council showed a truck racing down a road, white smoke pouring out of it as it came under heavy fire from peshmerga fighters. It later showed a white, billowing cloud after the truck exploded and the remnants of it scattered across a road.

An official with the Kurdish council told The Associated Press that dozens of peshmerga fighters were treated for "dizziness, nausea, vomiting and general weakness" after the attack. He spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to discuss the incident.

The assertion has yet to be verified, but such battlefield tactics are banned under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. [As if ISIS hasn't already shown their barbarism.]

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Iraqi Kurds say ISIS used chemical weapons against troops | Fox News