ISIL militants parading kidnapped Christians.  The kidnapping of nearly 100 Assyrian Christians by Islamic State militants in Syria has prompted terrified families to flee their homes, as Washington vowed to defeat the group.  Nearly 1000 families have fled villages in the northeastern province of Hasakeh since Monday's kidnappings, according to the Sweden-based Assyrian Human Rights Network.  About 800 of them have taken refuge in the city of Hasakeh and 150 in Qamishli, a Kurdish city on the Turkish border, the group said, adding that the number of displaced people came to about 5000.  Most of the hostages were women, children or elderly.  The US and United Nations condemned the mass abduction - the first of its kind in the war-torn country - and demanded the release of the hostages.  "ISIL's latest targeting of a religious minority is only further testament to its brutal and inhumane treatment of all those who disagree with its divisive goals and toxic beliefs," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, using another acronym for IS.  The UN Security Council also condemned the abductions, demanding the hostages be immediately and unconditionally released.  Osama Edward, director of the Assyrian Human Rights Network, said he believed the abduction was linked to the jihadists' recent loss of ground in the face of US-led air raids against IS that began in Syria in September.  "They took the hostages to use them as human shields," he told AFP.  The jihadists, who are battling Kurdish fighters on the ground, may try to exchange the Assyrians for IS prisoners, he said.  Their aim was to take the Assyrian Christian village of Tal Tamer, near a bridge that links Syria to Iraq, he said.  According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Kurdish fighters recaptured three Assyrian villages and a nearby Arab village on Wednesday.  "The (Kurdish) People's Protection Units (YPG) have reclaimed Tal Shamiran, Tal Masri, Tal Hermel and Ghbeish," said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.  But fighting continues in the area, he added.  In Tal Shamiran, the jihadists burned down part of a church.  And in the Arab village of Ghbeish, IS decapitated four men, and burned down houses and a school. They accused the villagers of "collaborating" with the Kurdish fighters.  Edward, a native of an area of Hasakeh province home to 35 Assyrian villages, said the jihadists broke into houses at night as people slept.  The hostages were then taken to Shaddadi, an IS provincial stronghold.  The jihadists had been intimidating the villagers for weeks, he said, including threatening to remove crosses from their churches.  "People were expecting an attack, but they thought that either the Syrian army, which is just 30 kilometres from there, or the Kurds or the (US-led) coalition's strikes would protect them," Edward said.  In Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry said the US and Iran had a "mutual interest" in defeating IS but said the long-time foes were not co-operating to do so.  "They are totally opposed to ISIL and they are in fact taking on and fighting and eliminating ISIL members along the Iraqi border near Iran and have serious concerns about what that would do to the region," Kerry told lawmakers.  "So we have at least a mutual interest, if not a co-operative effort."  Meanwhile, the Syrian Catholic archbishop of Hasakeh-Nisibi accused Turkey of allowing jihadists responsible for the persecution of Syrian Christians to cross its border unchecked, while preventing Christians from fleeing.  Do you have any news photos or videos?
About 1,000 Assyrian families are believed to have fled their homes in the wake of the abductions by the Islamic State in Syria.