ishtartv.com-
christianpost.com
By Stoyan Zaimov , October
12, 2015
The
Islamic State terror group claims it will be executing 180 Assyrian Christians
who were kidnapped in mass raids in February, after negotiators failed to meet
the jihadists' high asking price to free the hostages.
ARA News reported on Monday that the terror group is
asking for $12 million for the release of the Assyrians, a sum deemed
"unbearable" for the community.
"The
negotiations, led by Bishop Ephrem Otnaial, head of the Church of the East in
Syria, have been suspended due to the unbearable demands of the terror
group," revealed Osama Edward, director of the Assyrian Human Rights
Network.
"ISIS
threatened to execute the 180 hostages if we didn't pay the ransom," he
continued.
A
member of the Civil Peace Committee in Tel Temir, who chose to remain
anonymous, said that "internal rifts" emerged among Assyrian
officials about how to gather the money.
The
180 Assyrians are part of a group of 230 people kidnapped by IS in February
from villages in the Khabur river valley in Syria.
Early
in September, hopes
emerged that the hostages might be freed, after IS reportedly agreed
to lower its ransom demands.
Syrian
Catholic Archbishop Jacques Behnan Hindo revealed that negotiators had managed
to explain to IS forces that asking for 23 million dollars to free 230 people
was an impossible sum, and claimed that IS had decided to ask for "much,
much less," though he did not share the precise amount.
"Therefore,
now, the biggest obstacle regarding the release of our Assyrian brothers is no
longer money, but the difficulty of how to organize the phase of
liberation," Hindo said at the time.
The
Catholic Archbishop even suggested that buses were being organized to collect
the hostages and bring them back to Hassaké.
The
terror group, which has been persecuting Christians and other religions
minorities across Iraq and Syria, has released small groups of hostages it
kidnapped from Khabur, but is still holding the vast majority of people it took
captive.
IS
has specifically targeted Assyrians, looking to drive them out of their
millennia-old communities.
Last
week, IS released a video showing the
executions of three of the hostages, which drew condemnation from
persecution watchdog groups, such as A Demand for Action.
"We
condemn this latest act of barbarism in the strongest possible terms. The
systematic ethno-religious cleansing of Assyrians/Syriacs/Chaldeans continues.
They are helpless. They are children. They are women. They are somebody's
father and brother," wrote A Demand for Action spokesperson Diana Yaqco.
"We
plea and beg of the international community to intervene immediately,"
Yaqco added. "We have been driven out of our ancestral lands. We have been
killed and crucified. The international community must act now to save lives of
others kidnapped."