Militants belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on Thursday killed 26 civilians in the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria after the Muslim radicals took control of some of the villages there after fighting government forces, Alarabiya.net reported quoting sources from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman commented, "Daesh executed 26 civilians, including at least 10 by beheading, after accusing them of collaborating with the Syrian regime." Daesh is the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
An international team of observers has warned that several UNESCO world heritage sites are threatened with destruction if Palmyra falls completely under the militants hands. ISIS has destroyed a significant number of world heritage sites from territories the group controls in Iraq.
In a separate report, IBCWorld News has confirmed that ISIS bandits beheaded three Iraqi soldiers suspected of spying for Baghdad in a public execution. The report said the group has released several pictures taken in the north-west Iraqi province of Nineveh showing three men being read of their charges and sentenced to death while masked ISIS gunmen stood guard.
The soldiers could be seen kneeling with heads bow before an executioner struck their necks with a sword. ISIS' self-declared caliphate saw a rise in the number of public beheadings, stonings and other barbaric forms of killings in the region.
ISIS militants are trying enforce a strict implementation of Sharia law in areas under its control, across a large swathe of land in Iraq and Syria. The militants carry out public executions and physical mutilation to any person charged with crimes.
The strict Sharia law practiced by the Islamic militants has victimized men accused of being gay to be thrown from rooftops and stone to death any person accused of committing adultery. Suspected thieves have their hands chopped off.
The report also quoted the Kurdish news agency  Rudaw as telling a Yazidi member of the Iraqi parliament identified as Sheikh Shamo, that ISIS militants have been using Yazidi slave children as jihadi soldiers and sometimes as suicide bombers to carry out attacks.
Shamo was quoted as saying, "ISIS has established military training camps for the Yezidi children held by the group in the Syrian city of Raqqa and Tal Afar in Mosul. Over the past months, many Yezidi women, children and elders managed to escape in various ways and have arrived in the Kurdistan region, but we still believe more than 3,000 Yezidis remain in the hands of ISIS."
Meanwhile, a new short video emerged Thursday that aims to raise awareness about the origin of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism that is sweeping across the Middle East. The 97-second video also provides an insight on how Islamic terrorism emerged within Iran.
