A Christian woman has given a horrific account of how ISIS militants went on a ruthless killing spree in her town, murdering children in a bakery dough machine, and executing her own son when he refused to deny Christ.
Alice Assaf told the human rights group Roads of Success, based in southern California, that ISIS militants took over her town in Syria two years ago and proceeded to gun down 200 families "right before our eyes".
She said the jihadists first targeted Christians before going after Syrian army personnel.
The victims included six men working at a local bakery who were rounded up and burned alive in the bakery's oven.
"After that, they caught some 250 kids and kneaded them like dough in the bakery dough machine," she said.
Assaf described how the barbarity continued when the jihadists caught wind of a plan by the Syrian army to launch a counter-attack on the town. It was at this point she says they started to throw children off the balconies in an attempt to deter the army from entering the town.
As the jihadists went through the town trying to flush out members of the Syrian army, Assaf says two soldiers turned up at her house trying to hide. While she feared they would all be killed, she says her son told her he would "prefer to die than run away".
"So when ISIS raided the tenement building where we live, my neighbor come over and asked my son to use a Muslim name, 'Khaled.' But he said, 'No. No. I don't want to die with the name 'Khaled.'"
"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 continued. "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.'"
Assaf said the militants broke into their home after a tip-off from neighbors and proceeded to arrest her son. They told him they would not kill him if he renounced his Christian faith, but he refused.
"But, he said to them, 'I will never abandon my religion.' So, they started to beat him in the guest room.
"They took him to backyard and shot him. And they killed him."
She added: "I console myself with the fact that he died a true Christian."
