The Islamic State terror group kidnapped about 400 people from a town that its militants stormed in Syria’s eastern province of Deir al-Zour, media reported on Sunday.
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Weekend fighting in the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor has left at least 135 dead, including 50 pro-government fighters and 85 civilians, as ISIS forced its way into the area.
The state-run SANA news agency said Sunday that most of those killed in day-long attacks on Deir el-Zour were elderly people, women and children.
“At least 150 people were beheaded yesterday by ISIS in the massacre of Deir al-Zour, including dozens of women and children”, reported the Italian ANSA news service, citing local sources in Syria.
The Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV, which is close to the Syrian government, also reported a massacre and said ISIS killed dozens of people, including women and children, and threw their bodies in the Euphrates River.
He said they had been taken to areas under Da’ish control in the west of Deir Ezzor province and to the border with Raqqa province – the capital- designated of the terrorist group.
It quoted the Syrian prime minister, Wael al-Halaqi, as saying that the “legal and moral responsibility for this barbaric and cowardly massacre… lies on the shoulders of all the states that support terrorism and that fund and arm takfiri [Sunni extremist] groups”.
Numerous estimated 400 prisoners are family members of forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and were captured during an IS assault on a northwestern neighborhood of the city and the nearby village of al-Bghiliyyeh on Saturday.
Several Mosul residents had claimed that when the black clad jihadists made it to Mosul, some 250 miles north of Ramadi city retaken by Iraqi forces, they were set on fire in the town’s main square.
Backed by Russian air strikes, the observatory said that pro-government forces were now within 10 kilometres of the IS provincial base, about 60km northeast of Syria’s second city of Aleppo, the capital of Aleppo province.
If confirmed, the death toll in the assault would be one of the highest in a single attack by IS, though the jihadists have carried out mass murders before. They had been kidnapped from the suburb of Al-Baghalijeh and surrounding areas and in areas controlled by the IS.
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Syria’s war has killed more than 260,000 people and forced millions to flee their homes.
