Free Republic

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...

Syria's leading Kurdish militia and several Arab rebel groups that have fought alongside it have formalised their alliance in a new group called the Syrian Democratic Forces. The formation of the alliance comes after Washington said it was abandoning a plan to train and equip rebels to fight the Islamic State group and could provide the US with a new partner in the battle against the jihadist group. The alliance was announced in a statement published online by a spokesman for the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG). "The sensitive stage through which our country Syria is passing and the rapid...

A U.S.-backed Syrian-Kurdish militia, a number of Arab rebel groups and an Assyrian Christian group in Syria have formed a coalition to build a democratic representation for a number of moderate parties within Syria, according to a statement seen by Reuters on Monday. The new alliance, which is calling itself the Democratic Forces of Syria, includes the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) that beat back the Islamic State (ISIS) with the support of U.S. airstrikes in the Syrian-Kurdish border town of Kobani earlier this year. The YPG continues to battle the radical Islamist group in areas of northeastern Syria and...

Christians in Syria have welcomed the statement by US General John Allen, the special coordinator of the International Coalition against ISIS, in which he recognised the need for all peoples in Syria to have some degree of autonomy when they are freed from tyranny. The Syriac-Assyrians made their comments in a press release in which they also welcomed the continuing efforts of the coalition against ISIS. "This demonstrates," they said, "that the war against the militant group is a war to defend the whole of humanity." against the militant group is a war to defend the whole of humanity." There...

Ancient Assyrian tablets, dictating social arrangements including women's rights, dating back to 4,000 years have been excavated in the Central Anatolian province of Kayseri, a local newspaper reported Thursday. Prof. Fikri Kulakoglu of Ankara University told Dogan News Agency that the Kultepe-Kanis-Karum trade colony site where the tablets were unearthed was remarkable. He said the tablets revealed detailed information about the Assyrians, spanning from commercial trade to the nitty-gritty of the local social life. "From women's rights to the adoption of children and marriages arranged at birth, the tablets include all kinds of civilizational and social data from Anatolia 4,000...

ISIL is obliterating the Middle East's cultural landmarks. But should we arm ourselves in order to save threatened sites, asks Dan Cruickshank. ‘When Egypt comes under the auspices of the Khalifa [Caliphate], there will be no more Pyramids, no more Sphinx, no more idolatry.” This, I was told by British Muslim political activist Anjem Choudary, “will be just”. This chilling recent interview with Choudary in east London was part of a journey that started in early 2002. I went to Afghanistan in March of that year, just after the fall of the Taliban, to report for a television programme on...

A family of Assyrian Christians has been guarding the tomb of Nahum the Elkoshi for generations. That tradition may be ending soon.Al Qosh, IRAQ – Nahum the Prophet warned the world about the impending end of the Assyrian empire and the destruction of its capital, Nineveh. More than 2,600 years later, his tomb, inside an ancient synagogue in the Iraqi city of Al Qosh, may face the same fate, courtesy of ISIS. Smooth domes topped with crucifixes rise slightly above the beige stone houses in Al Qosh, the modern town built on the ancient Nineveh plain. The town is a...

Sons of Liberty International, a group headed by Baltimore-native Matthew VanDyke, a renowned Libyan revolutionary and former prisoner of war, has been operating in northern Iraq since December 2014. The organization is training recruits in the Nineveh Plains Protection Unit, a militia made up of a couple thousand Christians. Matthew VanDyke, the leader of the Sons of Liberty International, a group that focuses on training and equipping Iraqi Christian militia to combat ISIS, recently discussed the lack of help from outside forces in the region. He told PRI.org that no one else is helping Christians from Iraq, including the U.S....

The ancient city of Gezer has been an important site since the Bronze Age, because it sat along the Way of the Sea, or the Via Maris, an ancient trade route that connected Egypt, Syria, Anatolia and Mesopotamia. The city was ruled over many centuries by Canaanites, Egyptians and Assyrians, and Biblical accounts from roughly the 10th century describe an Egyptian pharaoh giving the city to King Solomon as a wedding gift after marrying his daughter. .... The site has been excavated for a century, and most of the excavations so far date to the the 10th through eighth centuries...

A Syrian Christian fighter has beheaded an Islamic State group (IS) militant to avenge people "executed" by the jihadists in northeastern Syria, a monitor said on Friday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the incident took place on Thursday in Hasakeh province, where IS holds large areas of the countryside. According to the monitor, the Christian fighter, a member of the minority Assyrian community, found the jihadist in the local village of Tal Shamiram. "He took him prisoner and when he found out he was a member of IS, the Assyrian fighter beheaded him in revenge for abuses committed...

In Heaven + Earth (Global Warming: The Missing Science), Ian Plimer, Professor of Mining Geology at The University of Adelaide, Australia, asks us to embrace big-picture science views; for to recognize our limits is a sign of maturity. "Climate science lacks scientific discipline," says the pro-amalgamation Professor, and in order to see more clearly we need to adopt an interdisciplinary approach. This requires humbleness. In Chapter 2: History, Plimer travels back in time, thousands of years, in fact, to debunk Gore's catastrophic global warming myths. I particularly like his research on the ancient Greeks. For Plato (427-347 BC) advanced the...

...Through their shared history, Egyptians and Nubians also came to worship the same chief god, Amun, who was closely allied with kingship and played an important role as the two civilizations vied for supremacy. During its Middle and New Kingdoms, which spanned the second millennium B.C., Egypt pushed its way into Nubia, ultimately conquering and making it a colonial province. The Egyptians were drawn by the land's rich store of natural resources, including ebony, ivory, animal skins, and, most importantly, gold. As they expanded their control of Nubia, the Egyptians built a number of temples to Amun, the largest of...

According to reports from Syria and also the Turkish press, ISIS has bombed two churches in Syria, the St. Odisho Assyrian Church in Tel Tal and the St. Rita Tilel Armenian Church in Aleppo. The churches were bombed yesterday. Located on the Khabur river in the Hasaka province in Syria, Tel Tal is one of the 35 Assyrian villages that was attacked by ISIS on February 23. ISIS captured nearly 300 Assyrians in those attacks and subsequently released 23, all from the village of Tel Goran. The remaining Assyrians are still being held captive. The entire Assyrian population of these...

Syria Deeply spoke with displaced Assyrian families who fled to Beirut after Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS arrived in their hometown of al-Hasakah. Many of them have relatives presently held hostage by ISIS.Beirut, Lebanon – “We are searching for the quickest way to go to Europe or Canada, maybe America,” said Jack Zayya, an Assyrian Christian refugee from Syria who arrived in Beirut two months ago. Standing in front of a local Assyrian church, he recalled the difficult journey from his hometown of al-Hasakah, situated in northeastern Syria and home to many Christians and Kurds.Before the war, Zayya led a...

Archaeologists and officials have expressed outrage about the bulldozing of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud by Islamic State militants in Iraq. IS began demolishing the site, which was founded in the 13th Century BC, on Thursday, according to Iraqi officials. The head of the UN's cultural agency condemned the "systematic" destruction in Iraq as a "war crime". IS, which controls large areas of Iraq and Syria, says shrines and statues are "false idols" that have to be smashed. "They are erasing our history," said Iraqi archaeologist Lamia al-Gailani.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group began bulldozing the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in Iraq on Thursday, the government said, in the jihadists' latest attack on the country's historical heritage. ISIS "assaulted the historic city of Nimrud and bulldozed it with heavy vehicles," the tourism and antiquities ministry said on an official Facebook page. An Iraqi antiquities official confirmed the news, saying the destruction began after noon prayers on Thursday and that trucks that may have been used to haul away artefacts had also been spotted at the site. "Until now, we do not know to...

The Islamic State jihadist group began bulldozing the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in northern Iraq on Thursday, the tourism and antiquities ministry said. IS "assaulted the historic city of Nimrud and bulldozed it with heavy vehicles," the ministry said on an official Facebook page, the group's latest attack on the country's historical heritage.

BAGHDAD - Islamic State militants in northern Iraq have destroyed a collection of statues and sculptures dating back thousands of years, according to a video published online in the name of the radical Islamist group. The video showed the statues, some identified as antiquities from Iraq's 7th century BC Assyrian era, being toppled, smashed and broken up by sledgehammer. A man shown in the video said they were being destroyed because they promoted idolatry. "The Prophet ordered us to get rid of statues and relics, and his companions did the same when they conquered countries after him," the unidentified man...

While the history of civilization is being demolished by war and religious zealots in the rest of Iraq, in the Kurdistan Region archeologists are marveling at a stunning discovery: the remains of a long-lost temple from the biblical kingdom of Urartu, dating back to the 9th century BC. Kurdish archaeologist Dlshad Marf Zamua, who has studied the columns and other artifacts at the find, told Rudaw these were unearthed piecemeal over the past four decades by villagers going about their lives, digging for cultivation or construction. But only recently, after the discovery of life-size human statues and the unearthed columns,...

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has released a video showing jihadists smashing, bulldozing and blowing up 3,000-year-old artefacts in the ancient Assyrian capital of Nimrud. The video depicting the destruction at the Iraqi site shows jihadists using sledgehammers and drills to smash huge alabaster reliefs and a bulldozer to bring down walls. The jihadists are then shown placing barrels apparently filled with explosives before blowing up three separate areas of the site, one of Iraq's greatest archaeological treasures.