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Extremists from the Islamic State have executed over 160 Syrian soldiers fleeing from them, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Thursday. The assault is the latest of several human rights abuses in the country which have alarmed Western powers, who are afraid of a global escalation of terror.
The killings come as US President Barack Obama is reportedly mulling the launch of air strikes on IS extremists in Syria and is about to launch a mission to help Shi’ite Turks trapped by the extremists in an Iraqi town.
The UK-based monitor said that Syrian air strikes killed 6 IS leaders on Thursday, but Washington has stopped short of co-operating with the Syrian government so far.
The killings took place in the province of Raqa, the observatory said, adding that Syrian soldiers were fleeing to government-held territory before they were overran by extremists in Tabqa. The extremists took to Twitter to boast that they had killed the 200 soldiers.
“IS executed more than 160 Syrian soldiers in three different places in Raqa province yesterday and at dawn today”, Rami Abdel Rahman, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said.
He added that the defeated garrison had 1,400 soldiers, 200 of whom had been killed by the IS, while 700 of them had managed to escape; of the remaining 500, dozens were caught on Wednesday night as they tried to cross the desert into Orontes Valley and government-held territory.
The IS posted video of young men in their underwear forced to march barefoot on a desert road, with the extremists shouting “Islamic State” and “There’s no going back”.
On Thursday, the Syrian air force had hit back with a strike on a building in the town of Mu-Hassan, where several IS leaders were meeting, and killed six of them, the monitor said.