Including one man who was crucified alive for eight hours.

BAGHDAD/DAMASCUS (BosNewsLife) — Minority Christians in Syria and neighboring Iraq faced more upheaval Monday, July 7, after an Islamic group expelled tens of thousands of residents from their homes and crucified at least nine people.

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) reportedly forced some 30,000 people to leave their houses in the eastern Syrian town of Shuheil. Many fear their homes will be looted, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a respected monitoring group.

The ISIL, which declared the territory in Syria and Iraq a “caliphate,” or Islamic state, also nailed nine men to a cross in Syria’s Aleppo province last week as punishment for rebellion, several sources said.

Usually the men ISIL crucifies are shot in the head first, then hung for public viewing with their arms tied to a horizontal beam, according to observers familiar with the situation.

However one of the nine men was “crucified alive for eight hours” in the town of al-Bab, said the Syrian Observatory. The report didn’t specify if the man was killed.

It was unclear whether Syrian troops, who apparently advanced in and around the northern city of Aleppo on Monday, July 7, would be able to halt the ISIL fighters. Yet, most Christians have already been forced to flee Syria and Iraq, where the head of the Chaldean-Catholic Church, Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako, fears Christian life will eventually come to an end in the region.