Beirut: Fighters from a Syrian insurgent group appear to have killed more than a dozen Daesh captives with gunshots to the head, according to a video posted online on Wednesday which evoked a similar style to the terrorists’ own footage.
The rebels from a group known as Islam Army are shown wearing orange jumpsuits and leading a group of alleged Daesh fighters dressed in black along a road lined by trees. The men are hobbling and bound together with balls and chains. They are made to kneel and then shot dead.
Islam Army was formed by a merger of rebel factions in 2013 and is mainly based in the eastern Ghouta area near Damascus.
Its leader Zahran Alloush is one of the most prominent figures of the insurgency and his role has taken him recently to Istanbul and Amman, both hubs for Syrian opposition activity against President Bashar Al Assad.
The video, tweeted on an Islam Army Twitter feed and posted on its website, said its fighters were avenging Daesh’s own killings of Islam Army members.
The video’s commentary combines religious and sectarian language and accuses Daesh of working with Shiites and the minority Alawite sect to which Al Assad belongs.
In Tal Abyad, Syrian Kurdish forces regained full control of the city on Wednesday, expelling Daesh who had seized a district of the strategic border town, a monitor said.
Meanwhile, the World Food Programme said Wednesday it had to cut food aid for Syrian refugees in Lebanon in half because of a funding crisis and may soon have to halt all food support for most refugees in Jordan.
Lebanon and Jordan are among five countries that host some 4 million Syrian war refugees. The UN refugee agency warned last week that with the Syria conflict in its fifth year, funding levels for refugee aid programs dropped to a dangerous low in 2015.
