ISIS takes control of Palmyra, executes 280
Terrorists rely on informants, force women to wear veils, enforce strict daily prayer
BEIRUT— Islamic State militants hunted down Syrian government troops and loyalists in the newly captured town of Palmyra, shooting or beheading them in public as a warning, and imposing their strict interpretation of Islam, activists said Friday.
The purge, which relied mostly on informants, was aimed at solidifying the extremists’ grip on the strategic town, which was overrun Wednesday by Islamic State fighters.
It also was part of a campaign to win the support of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s opponents, who have suffered from a government crackdown in the town and surrounding province in the past four years of Syria’s civil war.
The strategy included promises to fix the electricity and water grids — after Palmyra is cleared of regime loyalists, according to an activist in the historic town. The man is known in the activist community by the nom de guerre of Omar Hamza because he fears for his security.
The capture of Palmyra has raised alarm that the militants might try to destroy one of the Mideast’s most spectacular archeological sites — a well-preserved, 2,000-year-old Roman-era city on the town’s edge — as they have destroyed others in Syria and Iraq. For the moment, however, their priority appeared to be in imposing their rule, with activists saying there were no signs the group moved in on the ancient ruins.
In neighbouring Iraq, Islamic State militants made more territorial gains, seizing the small town of Husseiba, less than a week after capturing Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, said tribal leader Sheikh Rafie al-Fahdawi.
They captured the Iraqi side of a key border crossing with Syria on Thursday after Iraqi forces pulled out. The fall of the al-Walid crossing in Anbar province will help the militants shuttle weaponry and reinforcements more easily across the border of the two countries where they have declared a self-styled caliphate.
The Islamic State militants imposed a curfew in Palmyra from 5 p.m. until sunrise and barred people from leaving town until Saturday morning to ensure that none of the government figures they seek manage to escape, activists and officials said. Jihadists went through the streets telling residents via loudspeakers not to give refuge to Assad loyalists.
Islamic State commanders also fanned out to Palmyra’s mosques to deliver sermons during Friday’s weekly communal prayers. Mosques were packed after fighters on Thursday had urged people to attend and told women to cover their faces.
The sermons were mostly about the importance of performing the five-times-a-day prayers in the mosques and women having to cover their faces and dress in loose clothes, Hamza said via Skype. At the mosque where he prayed, the person delivering the sermon was a non-Syrian Arab, as were most of the leaders in the group in town, he said, while the fighters were Syrians.
In his sermon, the speaker warned that women not wearing the proper Islamic attire will be flogged.
Fighters were carrying out a bloody, door-to-door search to find and kill fugitive soldiers and known Assad loyalists, several activists said.
Prompted by the Islamic State warnings not to provide shelter, some residents came forward with information about troops who had tried to melt into the population when the militants stormed into the town, said another activist who goes by the nom de guerre of Bebars alTalawy.
Amateur video posted on a pro-Islamic State Facebook page showed residents and militants gathering around two bloodied men in military uniforms on a Palmyra street.
“Let all the residents see them,” one of the men shown in the video told an Islamic State fighter. Photos circulating on pro-Islamic State Twitter feeds showed purported government troops shot dead or decapitated. The video and photos appeared genuine and corresponded to other reporting.
Hamza and al-Talawy said as many as 280 loyalists and government soldiers were summarily killed, some shot in the head or beheaded in a public square.
Militants abducted soldiers and pro-government gunmen from homes, shops and other places where they had sought to hide, said al-Talawy, who is based in the nearby city of Homs.
“The search is going from house to house, shop to shop, and people on the streets have to show identity cards,” said Osama al-Khatib, an activist from Palmyra who is now in Turkey. Al-Khatib last contacted his friends and relatives Friday morning in Palmyra before the government cut off phones and Internet service in the town. The communication was later partially restored.
Al-Khatib said some 150 bodies lay in the streets, including 25 residents who were members of the pro-government militia known as the Popular Committees.