Syria: IS kills hundreds in Palmyra
BEIRUT—Islamic State (IS) fighters have killed at least 400 people, including women and children, in Palmyra since capturing the ancient Syrian city four days ago, Syrian state media said on Sunday.
It was not immediately possible to verify the account, but it was consistent with reports by activists that the Islamist fighters had carried out extrajudicial executions since capturing the city from government troops.
The Sunni Muslim militants seized the city of 50,000 people, site of some of the world’s most extensive and best preserved ancient Roman ruins, on Wednesday, days after also capturing the city of Ramadi in neighboring Iraq.
The two near-simultaneous victories were IS’s biggest successes since a US-led coalition began an air war against its fighters last year, and have forced an examination of whether the strategy is working.
“The terrorists have killed more than 400 people including women and children... and mutilated their bodies, under the pretext that they cooperated with the government and did not follow orders,” Syria’s state news agency said, citing residents inside the city.
It added that dozens of those killed were state employees, including the head of the nursing department at the hospital and all her family members.
IS supporters have posted videos on the Internet which they say show fighters going room to room in government buildings, searching for government troops and pulling down pictures of President Bashar al-Assad and his father.
Activists have said on social media that hundreds of bodies, believed to be government loyalists, were in the streets.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which monitors violence in the country with a network of sources on the ground, says that some people were beheaded in the town since it fell but has not given an estimate for the toll among civilians. It says at least 300 soldiers were killed in the days of fighting before the city was captured.
“A bigger number of troops have disappeared and it is not clear where they are,” SOHR’s Rami Abdulrahman said.
Syrian state television said on Sunday its air force had killed 300 insurgents in strikes that broke the siege of the Jisr alShughour hospital. The al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, an insurgent group involved in the offensive in the area, said the government forces had fled.
State television aired footage on Sunday showing wounded soldiers arriving at another hospital in the nearby coastal area, stronghold of Assad’s supporters.
Hezbollah is fighting across all of Syria alongside Assad’s Army and is willing to increase its presence there when needed, the leader of the Lebanese Shiite movement said on Sunday.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah told thousands of supporters via video link that the fight was part of a wider strategy to prevent groups like al-Qaida’s wing in Syria, Nusra Front, and the ultra-hardline IS from taking over the region.
Western countries and their Arab allies are bombing IS but supporting other antiAssad forces elsewhere in the country, where government troops have lost territory in recent months.