As deadline passes, fate of Syrian women held by ISIS uncertain

The fate of more than 30 Syrian women who were kidnapped by ISIS after it carried out a series of coordinated suicide attacks and shootings in the Syrian province of Sweida, is still unknown after ISIS recently threatened to kill them all.

ISIS leaked a video on Tuesday where they murdered a woman they had abducted in Sweida, south of Damascus, after negotiations through a mediator failed.

One of the masked men in the video said that they would execute all those abducted within a maximum of three days if Bashar al-Assad’s regime did not comply with its demand to release all ISIS members the regime had detained. The deadline ISIS gave to comply with their demands ended on Thursday.

Activists on social media identified the woman in the video as Thuraya Abu Ammar. According to the Sweida24 news site, the woman was 25 years old, and was kidnapped on July 25 during the attack.

Influential social and political figures within the Druze-majority province accused the Assad regime of “laxity” and neglecting to protect the residents of the province, most of whom refused to join the military operations against other Syrians.

According to many media outlets, multiple sources from the province accused the Assad regime of causing the massacre following an agreement with ISIS that called for their transfer from southern Damascus to the eastern desert of Sweida. The sources added that this transfer enabled ISIS to carry out its military operation easily, especially in the absence of Assad’s militants.

The committee in charge of following-up on the kidnappings has made a public apology and stated its continued efforts to negotiate with ISIS. The committee also stressed that they faced many “obstacles”, the details of which they declined to disclose at the moment.

The committee’s apology reveals that they did not know of the murder at the time of its release. The statement said that the kidnappers did not make “any demands [that were] to be discussed [by the committee]”.

However, the video released by ISIS on October first shows a fighter demanding that the Assad regime release its captives and stop its military operation in al-Safa region in exchange for the Druze abductees.