Lebanon to shelter Assyrians fleeing IS

Lebanon said on Sunday that Assyrian Christians fleeing the Islamic State (IS) militants were welcome to take refuge in the country, considering their exceptional humanitarian case.

"After discussing the matter with Prime Minister Tammam Salam and Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas, I gave the order to allow the inflow of Assyrian refugees from Syria," Lebanon's Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk told the al-Mustaqbal daily in an interview.

According to Xinhua, Machnouk said "the case of the Assyrians fleeing massacres meets the extreme humanitarian cases, exempted from the recent government policy to stop allowing refugees in".

According to media reports, around 220 Assyrian Christians were abducted from their homes by IS gunmen in northeastern Syria last week.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a group monitoring the Syrian war said the Assyrians were kidnapped from 11 villages in al-Hasakah province, and that thousands more have fled their homes to avoid capture.

The activist group said on Saturday that 29 of the kidnapped Assyrians were to be released, while the rest were to be tried by the IS Sharia court.

Machnouk said in the interview that border control authorities were notified of the decision, and around 5,000 Assyrians were expected to flee to Lebanon.

Assyrians on Sunday held a mass at a church in Syrian capital Damascus, to pray for their fellow Assyrians abducted by the IS.

On Saturday, hundreds of Assyrians marched in Beirut in solidarity with their kidnapped brethren.