A contingent of teens and boys shot 25 Syrian troops dead at a UNESCO world heritage site in Palmyra, a video published by a group affiliated with the Islamic State reportedly shows. A crowd of men and children can be seen watching the mass killing.
The video shows over two
dozens Syrian soldiers loyal to Syria’s President Bashar Assad
brutally murdered by adolescent executioners in a Roman-era
amphitheater in the city of Palmyra, located in the Syrian
desert, according to reports.
The execution is said to have taken place shortly after the
Islamic State (IS, previous ISIS/ISIL) captured the historical
city on May 21. The UN human rights office said that one-third of
Palmyra’s 200,000 residents fled the city following the takeover.
READ MORE: ISIS fighters plant mines and bombs in
Palmyra – monitor
In the video, Syrian soldiers are seen kneeling in green and
brown military uniforms on the stage of the amphitheater stage
just before being shot dead from behind by the young militants,
according to reports. There is a huge IS flag displayed in the
background.
The perpetrators look like children or teenagers dressed in
desert camouflage and brown bandanas.
There appears to have been men and children watching the
executions from the stands of the theater.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring
group, was the first to report on the video. Their report was
released on May 27, less than a week after IS gained control over
the city, though the exact date of the alleged killings is
unknown.
The extremist organization is reportedly responsible for executing over 200 people, many of them civilians,
around the Palmyra area. At the end of May, there were reports
that Islamic State militants had killed at least 400 people in
Palmyra, mostly women and children.
This most recent act of violence has raised fears about more
brutality to come, as well as the fate of ancient ruins like the
amphitheater.
READ MORE: ISIS fighters enter ruins of ancient
Palmyra after taking full control of city – reports
“Using the Roman theater to execute people proves that these
people are against humanity,” Syria’s antiquities director
Mamoun Abdelkarim told AFP.
Some of the world’s most famous Middle East heritage sites are
located in Palmyra, such as Roman-era colonnades and
2,000-year-old ruins.
UNESCO describes Palmyra as a city of “outstanding universal
value,” an “oasis in the Syrian desert” northeast
of Damascus. “From the 1st to the 2nd century, the art and
architecture of Palmyra, standing at the crossroads of several
civilizations, married Greco-Roman techniques with local
traditions and Persian influences,” the United Nations
agency says.
READ MORE: A year of terror: ISIS kills over 3,000 in
Syria since declaring ‘caliphate’ – report
Islamic State has executed more than 3,000 people in Syria alone,
some 1,700 of whom were civilians, since the group proclaimed
themselves a caliphate on the territories of Syria and Iraq as of
June 29, 2014, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.