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Hundreds of Assyrian families have fled their homes in northeastern Syria after a mass kidnapping of their community by ISIS, activists said Wednesday, The Daily Star reported.

Some 1,000 families have fled their villages in Hassakeh since Monday’s abductions, said Osama Edward, director of the Sweden-based Assyrian Human Rights Network.

About 800 of them have taken refuge in the city of Hassakeh and 150 in Qamishli, a Kurdish-majority city on the Turkish border, Edward said, adding that the number of displaced people came to about 5,000.

Most of the hostages were women, children or elderly. State-run SANA news agency and the Assyrian Human Rights Network said they had been taken to the ISIS stronghold of Shaddadi, in Hassakeh province.

The U.S.-led coalition conducting a campaign of airstrikes against ISIS has targeted Shaddadi, a Arab-majority town, on several occasions.

Edward said he believed the abduction was linked to the jihadis’ recent loss of ground in the face of U.S.-led air raids against ISIS.

“They took the hostages to use them as human shields,” he told AFP.

The jihadis, who are battling Kurdish fighters on the ground, may try to exchange the Assyrians for ISIS prisoners, said Edward.

Their aim was to take the Assyrian village of Tal Tamer, near a bridge that links Syria to Iraq, he said.