ISIS kills 250 kids using dough machine, burns 6 men in bakery
A Christian woman from Syria recounted her horrifying experience with ISIS when the group executed her 18-year-old son and killed several hundred children when it attacked a town in Damascus two years ago.
Alice Assaf narrated how the militants took over her hometown of Adra al-Ummaliya. She said in an interview released recently by the human rights group Roads of Success that ISIS attacked around 6 a.m. on a day her husband was away in Damascus.
Assaf, who was alone with her son and daughter, initially suggested that they run away after witnessing several murders.
"Members of 200 different families were killed right before our eyes," Assaf said, according to an English translation of her video interview.
She decided that it would be better for them to die at home so that other members of the family would know what happened to them. When they got home, she was told that ISIS was killing Christians.
One neighbor let Assaf and her children stay at her house for awhile but they eventually tried to flee. She asked for help from a Muslim neighbor who tried to find an opportunity for the family to escape. Assaf decided to stay with her neighbor because many of the passersby had already been killed.
"Later on, we heard that the militants grabbed six strong men working at the bakery and burned them inside the oven. After that, they caught some 250 kids and kneaded them like dough in the bakery dough machine," she said, adding that none of the children who were killed were older than 4.
She recalled that ISIS started throwing children from the balconies to discourage the army from entering the town.
When two soldiers came to her house seeking refuge, Assaf worried that they might be targeted. Her son refused to leave and told her, "I prefer to die than run away."
One neighbor suggested to her son to use a Muslim name to avoid getting killed but he refused.
"My son said to me, 'No, mother, I don't want to die with an identity not my own. I prefer to die with the name George,'" Assaf narrated.
"I asked my son then to hide, but he refused and said, 'I don't want to hide myself. You are the one who taught me to follow what Christ said' — 'whoever denies me before man, I will also deny before my father who is in Heaven,'" she continued.
Assaf said that one of her neighbors told the militants that soldiers were hiding at her house so they broke in and arrested her son. He was told that he would be spared if he renounced Christianity but he refused.
The Syrian mother said that the militants took her son into the guest room and beat him up. Later on, he was taken to the backyard where he was shot.
Assaf went to search for her son's body in hospitals so she can bury him herself but she found out later that her son was buried by the army in a mass grave. She said that her only consolation is that her son died as a true Christian.
