1 | The Islamic State militant group has abducted 230 civilians, including at least 60 Christians, after seizing a strategically located town in the central Syrian province of Homs. |
2 | The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitoring group, said the civilians were taken on August 6 in the town of Al-Qaryatain, which IS militants captured late August 5. |
3 | Many of the Christians had fled from Aleppo, in Syria's north, to seek refuge in Al-Qaryatain. |
4 | Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said those abducted were wanted by IS for "collaborating with the regime." |
5 | Al-Qaryatain had a pre-war population of 18,000, including Sunni Muslims and around 2,000 Syriac Catholics and Orthodox Christians. |
6 | But the town's Christian population has dropped to only several hundred. |