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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...

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...

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...

...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...

Two of the ancient cities now being destroyed by Islamic State lay buried for 2,500 years, it was only 170 years ago that they began to be dug up and stripped of their treasures. The excavations arguably paved the way for IS to smash what remained - but also ensured that some of the riches of a lost civilisation were saved. In 1872, in a backroom of the British Museum, a man called George Smith spent the darkening days of November bent over a broken clay tablet. It was one of thousands of fragments from recent excavations in northern Iraq,...

'Two of the ancient cities now being destroyed by Islamic State lay buried for 2,500 years, it was only 170 years ago that they began to be dug up and stripped of their treasures. The excavations arguably paved the way for IS to smash what remained - but also ensured that some of the riches of a lost civilisation were saved. In 1872, in a backroom of the British Museum, a man called George Smith spent the darkening days of November bent over a broken clay tablet. It was one of thousands of fragments from recent excavations in northern Iraq,...

ISIS Destroys Historic Christian And Muslim Shrines In Northern Iraq Structures destroyed include fourth-century Assyrian memorial Patriarch of Syriac Catholic church tells west: ‘Condemnation is not enough’ A picture released by Isis of a Christian shrine in Hamdaniya being destroyed. Kareem Shaheen 20 March 2015 Islamic State militants appear to have destroyed Christian and Shia Muslim shrines in northern Iraq – including a fourth-century memorial built by an Assyrian king – in the group’s latest rampage against the embattled country’s religious and cultural heritage. On Thursday, Isis’s “Nineveh province media office” released photographs showing the apparent destruction of the holy...

Iraq's 'Exorcist' temple falls into Isis jihadist hands Ancient pre-Christian temple in northern Iraq featured in film The Exorcist at risk of destruction by Isis jihadists An ancient temple made famous in the film The Exorcist has fallen into the hands of the Islamic militants who have taken over northern Iraq, the Telegraph has learnt. The pre-Christian worship complex at Hatra, a vast network of 200-ft high sun-god temples that is a Unesco world heritage site, features in the opening sequence of the 1973 horror classic. But it now lies in the territory claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq...

Iraqi officials in the northern city of Mosul said Saturday that militants with the Islamic State group have begun demolishing the ancient archaeological site of Hatra in northern Iraq in a push to rid its territory of symbols it says promote idolatry. An official with the ministry of tourism and antiquities' archaeological division in Mosul told The Associated Press that multiple residents living near Hatra heard two large explosions this morning, then reported seeing bulldozers begin demolishing the site. He spoke anonymously for fear of reprisal.

Screen Capture A video showing Islamic State militants with sledgehammers and power drills on a rampage inside the Mosul Museum shows the destruction of both reproductions and priceless originals from at least two important eras in the region’s history, said a British expert on Iraqi culture. Paul Collins, of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, in an email to Aleteia, said it was “distressing” to watch scenes of the destruction of colossal winged bulls of the seventh century BC. “These are certainly the real things and it looks from the video that the sculptures are those situated outside...

The recent bulldozing by the Islamic State (ISIS) of the ancient cities of Nimrud, Hatra, and Korsabad, three of the world's greatest archaeological and cultural sites, is just this group latest round of assaults across the large area under its control. Since January 2014, the flamboyantly barbaric ISIS has blown up Shi'i mosques, bulldozed churches, pulverized shrines, and plundered museums. Worse, the ISIS record fits into an old and common pattern of destruction of historical artifacts by Muslims.[snip] In some cases, conquerors turn non-Islamic holy places into Islamic ones, thereby asserting the supremacy of Islam. This can be done by...

Barbaric Islamic State militants have dealt yet another blow to Christian history in Iraq by using explosives to destroy the 4th Century Mar Benham monastery. The ancient building, built by Assyrian king Senchareb 1,600 years ago, stood in the Christian-dominated town of Bakhdida, just 20 miles south east of oil rich ISIS stronghold Mosul. Locals took to social media to share images of the massive blast, which reduced the ancient monastery to little more than vast piles of rubble. The attack was later confirmed by Kurdish journalists familiar with developments in the city.

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.

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.

Two of the Assyrian Christian hostages released by ISIS have spoken to the mediaTwo of the Assyrian Christian hostages released by ISIS have spoken to the media about their ordeal. Some 200 Christians were taken by the Islamist group on February 23 after they stormed a number of villages in the north-east of the country. One of the hostages, going by the name ‘Peter’, told the Times: “They entered our village at five in the morning, while everyone was sleeping. Some of them were Syrians, some were Chinese, some Russian – people who didn’t speak Arabic. They took 17 men,...

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...

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...

Onions are eaten and grown in more countries than any other vegetable but rarely seem to receive much acclaim. It's time to stop taking the tangy, tear-inducing bulb for granted and give it a round of applause, writes the BBC's Marek Pruszewicz. Deep in the archives of Yale University's Babylonian Collection lie three small clay tablets with a particular claim to fame - they are the oldest known cookery books. Covered in minute cuneiform writing, they did not give-up their secrets until 1985, nearly 4,000 years after they were written. The French Assyriologist and gourmet cook Jean Bottero - a...