The Islamic State group Sunday published a video showing the
execution-style killing of five Syrian citizen journalists they kidnapped eight
months ago in the east of the war-torn country.
The victims seen in the footage which was
posted on the blog of the group’s Al-Bayan radio were all from the city of
Deir Ezzor, 60 percent of which is controlled by IS.
A Britain-based monitor that works with
sources inside Syria to collect information on the five-year conflict said it
recognised one of the victims as a citizen journalist it had worked with.
The activists were kidnapped in Deir Ezzor
in October and killed between November and December, said the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights.
“The video was only published now because IS who are losing ground in Syria want to send a message that they are still strong,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.
The jihadist group has come under pressure
in Syria, where a US-backed Kurdish-Arab alliance is pressing an offensive to
retake its bastion of Manbij near the Turkish border.
IS has previously claimed the killing of
several citizen journalists working secretly in areas it controls in Syria including the group’s stronghold of Raqa and accused them of being spies.
It has also claimed to have killed
activists in Turkey.
Last October, the decapitated bodies of two
activists originally from Raqa were found in the Turkish city of Sanliurfa, 55
kilometres (35 miles) from the Syrian border.
In late December, Syrian anti-IS filmmaker
Naji Jerf was killed in the Turkish city of Gaziantep.
And in April, Syrian journalist Mohammed
Zaher al-Shurqat died in hospital after he was shot in the head by IS jihadists
in the same city.
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