The US-led coalition has launched air strikes against Islamic State (Isis) militants who took 220 Assyrian Christians captive in Syria this week, a monitoring group has said, as leaders of the community demanded military action and new weapons supplies to fight off the latest assault on minorities in the Middle East.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said Isis had taken hostage 220 Assyrian Christians from villages in north-eastern Syria, after the militant group swept through the area south of the Khabur river, a major tributary of the Euphrates. The figure is more than double the initial estimate of 90.



Assyrian sources in Hassakeh told the Guardian they believed the actual number was between 350 and 400, and that they were taken to nearby Jabal Abdul Aziz in the mountainous countryside.



Clashes are ongoing near Tal Tamr, an Assyrian town that straddles the river, where forces from the Syriac Military Council militia and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) – the militia that emerged victorious in the battle for the border town of Kobani – are defending the town. The air strikes targeted Isis positions nearby.

“What our people are facing is part of a series of attempts to uproot them from here,” Kino Gabriel, one of the leaders of the Syriac Military Council, said by telephone from Hassakeh. “But this time we are ready, we will defend ourselves, we will not allow another Seyfo to happen to us. We will sacrifice everything.”



Seyfo is another word for the genocide of the Assyrians by the Ottomans.



The council called on the US-led coalition to intervene on the ground in the area to save the Assyrians and to supply them with heavy weapons to fight off the Isis advance, drawing parallels with western support for the Kurdish Peshmerga in Iraq and the YPG in Kobani.



“The air strikes provide support, but there needs to be a presence on the ground, to take control and liberate areas, and destroy Daesh,” said Gabriel, using the Arabic acronym for Isis.



He said the Assyrian militias need more advanced weapons, including guided rockets, artillery and armoured vehicles.



And in a new statement on Thursday, the council said the new weaponry would be needed to change the balance on the ground against Isis.



Isis has been fighting against a Kurdish offensive in the area led by the YPG, which is backed by the US-led coalition. Assyrian militias have supported and fought alongside the YPG against Isis.



SOHR said 132 Isis fighters had died in the offensive since Saturday.



The area in the province of Hassakeh has long been home to the Assyrian minority, who took refuge there from the Ottoman genocide nearly 100 years ago and from massacres by the Iraqi kingdom in the 1930s.

