Advertisement

Islamic State group beheads 8 Shiites in Syria

 
Published March 30, 2015

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A new video released by the Islamic State group on Sunday shows its fighters cutting off the heads of eight men said to be Shiite Muslims. The video posted on social media said the men were beheaded in the central Syrian province of Hama.

The video could not be immediately independently verified, but it appeared genuine and corresponded to other Associated Press reporting of the events. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said that the video was authentic.

ISIS has beheaded scores of people since capturing large parts of Iraq and Syria last year in a self-declared caliphate.

In the video, the men, wearing orange uniforms with their hands tied behind their backs, were led forward in a field by teenage boys. They were then handed over to a group of ISIS fighters. A boy wearing a black uniform hands out knives to the fighters, who behead the hostages.

An ISIS fighter speaks in the video, using a derogatory term for Shiites and calling them "impure infidels." The fighter said in the video that the current military campaign against ISIS will only make the militant group stronger.

"Our swords will soon, God willing, reach the Nuseiries and their allies like Bashar and his party," the man said, referring to Syrian President Bashar Assad and Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group that is fighting on his side. The word Nuseiry is a derogatory term to refer to Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.