IS execute one of 12 hostages in Syria

THE Islamic State jihadist group has executed one of dozens of Druze hostages abducted from Syria’s southern province of Sweida last week, a journalist in the area and a monitor said on Sunday.

IS killed the 19-year-old male student on Thursday after kidnapping more than 30 people, mostly women and children, from a village in Sweida during a deadly rampage last week, the head of the Sweida24 news website Nour Radwan said.

Quoting relatives, Radwan, who was speaking from Sweida, said the young man was taken from the village of Al-Shabki on July 25 along with his mother.

His family received two videos, the first showing him being decapitated and the second of him speaking before being killed as well as images of his body after his death, Radwan said.

IS has not claimed the kidnappings and did not publish the video on their usual channels.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the young man’s execution was the first since the kidnappings.

The execution came “after the failure of talks between IS and regime forces over the transfer of IS fighters from the southwest of Daraa province to the Badiya” desert, said the Observatory.

It also follows the execution of 50 IS fighters and civilians in Daraa province earlier this week at the hands of rebels, the monitor said.

Druze protest in Israel

On Friday, a top Druze religious leader said Syrian regime ally Russia was in talks with the jihadists over the release of those abducted in Sweida.

IS jihadists have lost much of the territory they once controlled in Syria after overruning large swathes of it in 2014, but they retain a presence in the east of the country and in the vast Badiya desert that sweeps through its south.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Israeli Druze and their supporters rallied in central Tel Aviv Saturday to protest a new law they say makes them secondclass citizens.

The law makes no mention of equality or democracy, implying the country’s Jewish character takes precedence, and speaks of Israel as the historic homeland of the Jews, who have a “unique” right to self-determination within its borders.

Arabs have strongly criticised the legislation, particularly those from Israel’s 130,000-strong Druze community.

Druze, unlike other Arabs who may volunteer, are subject to compulsory service in the military or police alongside Jewish Israelis.