Syria's Assyrians: 'No one helped us'

'We have men but no one is giving us weapons to defend ourselves,' said Murad [EPA]

 

Jdeideh, Beirut - When Nino Youkhana, a Christian Assyrian from Syria in his late 30s, heard the news that fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) had descended upon the Assyrian villages along the Khabour River in northeastern Syria, he immediately called his uncle, who still lives there. "Someone who couldn't speak Arabic properly answered the phone and said 'we are the Islamic State' and then hung up," said Youkhana who fled his village,Tal Jazeera, two years ago to settle in Lebanon.
Youkhana kept calling back, and was finally allowed to speak to his uncle very briefly as long as they spoke in Arabic and not in their Assyrian dialect. "A guy with an Egyptian accent was with him when I spoke to him."
Almost a week has passed since the attack, and relatives are desperate to know what has happened to their loved ones.
"All of my relatives have been kidnapped, and their houses and the churches in the area burnt," Youkhana told Al Jazeera. "Apart from the first day's brief phone call, we haven't been able to speak to them, and we know nothing. All we want is some news on them, on what is going on. This is all we're asking for."
When ISIL fighters seized two Assyrian villages from Kurdish forces in Hassakah last week, entire residential areas were ransacked, houses burnt to the ground, and those who were not able to flee, were either killed or kidnapped, according to their relatives living in neighbouring Lebanon.
Activists in the Assyrian community in Beirut have put the number of kidnapped Assyrians at around 240, but relatives say the number is much higher. At least 3,000 others fled to the cities of Hassakah and Qamishli.