ISIS forces attacked a city in Syria Thursday night, right around the same time Americans were watching the Republican debate on TV. At least 60 Christians and hundreds of others were forcibly taken in the Homs province. Dozens of women and children were among those who were taken, according to Fox News.
ISIS is a militant terrorist group that has vowed to enact a "Caliphate" across the Middle East and elsewhere. In recent months, ISIS has attacked Christian communities all over Syria and elsewhere. Captured people are sold into slavery or executed, or both.
It is believed that ISIS took at least 230 residents of the town they attacked, the New York Daily News reported. About half of the 60 Christians who were taken later escaped into nearby villages. The other 170 people are Sunni Muslims. There are about 45 women and 19 children within the captive group. ISIS is expected to attack the Christian town of Sadad, home to more than 4,000 Christian families, imminently.
Activists are now screaming for justice in the wake of the recent attack. ISIS captured more than 220 Christians in February. With the exception of a few of them, their whereabouts remain unknown to this day.
People who tried to flee the attack were tracked and captured by ISIS, who had names of people to kidnap on a list. Amnesty International says that kidnappings in Syria have caused 240,000 people to die in the last four years, according to Breitbart.
"The abhorrent abduction in Syria of more than 200 people by the Islamic State highlights the dreadful plight of civilians caught up in the conflict in the country," said Neil Sammonds, the Syria researcher for Amnesty International.
