Independent journalist Mesut Mohammed, who works in Syria’s Kurdish region, informed that the Syrian government army has freed several Armenian and Assyrian families in Raqqa, and who could not leave the town ever since the Islamic State took control there, according to Agos Armenian weekly of Istanbul.

One of these Armenian women, Saus Karapetyan, said the Islamic State militants had forced them to wear a head covering, but not to cover their face, to differ from Muslim women.

And the other Armenians said they were ridiculed and debased every so often, and forced to pay tremendous amounts of taxes.