BICOM

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that US and European citizens were among 700 people taken hostage in Syria by ISIS earlier this week.

Speaking at the Valdai Forum in Sochi, Putin warned that ISIS “have issued ultimatums, specific demands and warned that if these ultimatums are not met they will execute 10 people every day”. He did not specify the group’s demands. He added that US and Kurdish forces that control the area of Deir az-Zor, where ISIS reportedly kidnapped the 700 people on 13 October after attacking a refugee camp, are staying conspicuously silent on this crisis.

Russian news agency TASS say officials believe ISIS kidnapped 130 families and have taken them to the city of Hajin, and that the “militants demand that Syrian Democratic Forces fighting on the side of the US-led coalition release captured IS terrorists and concede territory on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River”. The agency added: “IS attacked a refugee camp while the Syrian Democratic Forces tried to launch an offensive with support from the US-led coalition. The source noted that the failure of the Syrian Democratic Forces is due to multiple mistakes made by the US military coordinating the operation.”

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates that ISIS holds up to 300 hostages, which include 90 women, some of whom are the widows of ISIS members killed earlier in the Syrian war.

Earlier this week Iraqi Foreign Minister Dr. Ibrahim al-Eshaiker al-Jaafari visited Damascus on a three-day trip to Syria. During a meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem, al-Jaafari said that ISIS had been defeated, which “will benefit all the countries of the region and the world”.