Militants of the Islamic State abducted at least 90 Assyrian Christians in Syria on February 24. Women and children were also among those abducted as the group raided villages in the Hassakeh province.

While nearly 90 Christians were taken captive, over 3,000 people had to flee and seek refuge in the other cities.

The Islamic State has a history of killing hostages that also includes beheading and mass killing, including the recent beheadings of 21 Egyptian Christians and burning alive 45 people in Iraq.

What is Islamic State

Islamic State (IS) is a radical Islamist group that has seized most of the eastern Syria, specially the city of Raqqa, northern and western Iraq.

Although, their activity is limited to Iraq and Syria, the organisation has promised to "break the borders" of Jordan and Lebanon and to "free Palestine". It is believed that the group rules an area larger than the United Kingdom. According to a report published in the Guardian, before Isis took over, the population of Raqqa was 1 million; now it is 400,000.

Origin of Islamic State

A year after US led invasion of Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi formed al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and pledged his support to Osama bin Laden in 2002. In 2006, AQI formed an umbrella organisation Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). The ISI, which was weakened by US troops strengthened itself and in 2013 it merged with the forces in Syria and created Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). In December 2013, it exploited a political stand-off between the Shia-led government and the minority Sunni Arab community in Iraq. In June 2014, ISIS captured the northern Iraq city of Mosul, and then advanced southwards towards Baghdad. It declared the creation of a caliphate and changed its name to Islamic State.

Recent killings by the organisations

The brutal practice of killing people-beheading and burning alive hostages has created fear across the world. The group is in the habit of releasing videos of such killings and spreading terror among the people.

# The group killed 45 people by burning them to death in the Western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi. It was not clear who the group has killed and why but the officials believe that some of  the killed people were member of the security forces.

# The organisation released a video of beheading of 21 Egyptian. The slain men were all Christian, who were captured from Eastern Libya last year.

# On February 03, it released a video showing a Jordanian pilot being burnt alive inside a cage. In retaliation, Jordan pledged an ‘earth shaking’ reply and said that it would execute several captured militants.