(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) The U.S. has strongly condemned Daesh's kidnapping this week of a reported 230 civilians, including women and children, in the central Syrian province of Homs.

A State Department official said on Friday the attacks also resulted in the displacement of an estimated 2,000 people from nearby villages.

Mark Toner said the U.S. was demanding the "immediate and unconditional release of the civilians taken captive this week and of all those held" by Daesh.

"The fact that this kidnapping deliberately targeted members of a religious minority group further testifies to Daesh's rampant criminality and brutality against all those who disagree with its divisive goals and toxic beliefs," he said.

Toner stressed that Daesh continued to exact its "evil" upon innocents of all faiths and that many religious leaders in the region had united in condemning the group.

"To help bring an end to horrors like these, we remain committed to leading the international coalition to degrade and defeat Daesh," Toner said.

Last February, Daesh had kidnapped 90 Assyrian Christians from the villages of Tal Hormoz and Tal Shamiram near Tal Tamr town in Hasakah, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Last year, 500 people from Iraq's Ezidi religious minority were killed and 500 women were abducted as slaves by Daesh in Iraq's Sinjar region.

Ezidis are a religious sect fusing Zoroastrian, Manichaean, Jewish, Nestorian Christian and Islamic elements. They are regarded as heretical by orthodox Islamic scholars, leading to particular persecution by Daesh.