Conflicting reports are emerging from Syria after Islamist rebels took control of a majority-Christian town last week, with some estimating there are 80 dead and 3000 have fled the city.

World Watch Monitor has spoken with an Armenian Syrian pastor, whose family is from Kessab, close to Syria’s northern border with Turkey. The pastor reported that his family have fled the village after Syrian rebel jihadists took control of the area last week.

The fighting in the predominantly Armenian Christian town started Friday March 21st. World Watch Monitor has seen a letter in which he said fighters of the Al-Nusra front and ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Sham – greater Syria) entered North West Syria from Turkey and progressively took control over the town the same day.

Kessab is about 10km from the Mediterranean, and the most northern Syrian town near the coast.

The Armenian pastor writes that the day after the Al Qaeda-linked fighters took control, most of the town’s population (some 650 families, over 3000 individuals), fled into the hills or had taken refuge in the coastal city of Latakia, about 50km south of Kessab.

Armenian media sources have claimed 80 Armenians were killed in the assault. The pastor wrote: “In taking over control, churches were desecrated, houses pillaged and government buildings destroyed.”

He writes that many internally displaced Syrians had already taken refuge in the Kessab area, since it has been relatively calm over the past three years.

Sources who contacted the World Evangelical Alliance say the Syrian Army launched a counter offensive on Saturday 22 March. The RLC’s report reads:  “On Sunday 23 March jihadist reinforcements arrived. The remaining Armenians were taken hostage as homes were looted and churches desecrated.”

However, TIME Magazine has reported on the same conflict in Kessab, suggesting the religious conflict is overstated by mainstream media, also claims much of the information about thousands fleeing and 80 dying are not able to be confirmed. Journalist Harnia Mourtada writes that the conflict is far more complicated.

“Islamist rebels launch a string of military offensives against a Christian-majority town to root out government forces there, the latter respond by indiscriminately bombarding the town, residents run for their lives, and the government is quick to portray it as another incident of ethnic cleansing carried out by foreign-sponsored fundamentalists,” writes Mourtada. The writer points to several YouTube clips uploaded by rebel forces at pains to reassure Christians that the churches in Kessab remained perfectly intake after they’d taken the city.

But there are several messages coming from the rebels, as Mourtada points out in the TIME article, calling it a “dizzying array of contradictory clips and statements which have emerged in the wake of the Kessab takeover.”