Beirut: The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) militant group released a video purporting to show the beheading of US hostage Steven Sotloff, the Site monitoring service reported on Tuesday.
A masked figure in the video also issued a threat against a British hostage, a man the group named as David Haines, and warned governments to back off “this evil alliance of America against the Islamic State [Isil]”, the monitoring service said.
Sotloff, a freelance journalist, was kidnapped in Syria in August 2013. Sotloff’s mother Shirley appealed on August 27 in a videotaped message to Isil’s self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, for her son’s release.
On August 19, the group published a video showing the beheading of US hostage James Foley. The group said his slaying was in retaliation for US airstrikes on its forces in Iraq.
That video was issued after the United States resumed air strikes in Iraq in August for the first time since the end of the US occupation in 2011.
