Islamic State fighters take part in a military parade along the streets of northern Raqqa province, June 30, 2014. 
 
 BEIRUT The Islamic State militant group has killed 1,878 people in Syria during the past six months, the majority of them civilians, a British-based Syrian monitoring organization said on Sunday. 
 
 Islamic State also killed 120 of its own members, most of them foreign fighters trying to return home, in the last two months, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. 
 
 The militant group has taken vast parts of Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate in territory under its control in June. Since then it has fought the Syrian and Iraqi governments, other insurgents and Kurdish forces. 
 
 Rami Abdulrahman, the head of the Syrian monitoring group, told Reuters that Islamic State killed 1,175 civilians, including eight women and four children. 
 
 He said 930 of the civilians were members of the Sheitaat, a Sunni Muslim tribe from eastern Syria which fought Islamic State for control of two oilfields in August. 
 
 Reuters cannot independently verify the figures but Islamic State has publicized beheadings and stoning of many people in areas it controls in Syria and Iraq. These are for actions it sees as violating its reading of Islamic law, such as adultery, homosexuality, stealing and blasphemy. 
 
 The group, an offshoot of al Qaeda, has also released videos of executions of captured enemy fighters, activists and journalists. 
 
 It beheaded two U.S. journalists, and one American and two British aid workers this year in attempts to put pressure on a U.S.-led international coalition, which has been bombing its fighters in Syria since September. 
 
 Abdulrahman, who gathers information from all sides of the Syrian conflict, said that Islamic State had also executed 502 soldiers fighting for President Bashar al-Assad and 81 anti-Assad insurgents. 
 
 He said that 116 foreign fighters who had joined Islamic State but later wanted to return home, were executed in the Syrian provinces of Deir Al-Zor, Raqqa and Hassakeh since November. Four other Islamic State fighters were killed on other charges, Abdulrahman said. 
 
 The overwhelming number of the group's victims have been from the Syrian population.cracked down on peaceful pro-democracy protests in 2011. 
 
 (Reporting by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Clelia Oziel) ||||| ISIS has executed nearly 2,000 people in Syria - half of them from an important Sunni tribe - since announcing their “caliphate” in June, a monitoring group said Sunday. 
 
 
 
 “The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has documented the execution by the Islamic State of 1,878 people in Syria between June 28 when it announced its ‘caliphate” and December 27,” the group said in a statement. 
 
 The dead included 930 members of the Shaitat tribe which rose up against ISIS in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor in the summer, the UK-based Observatory said. 
 
 
 
 On Dec. 17, the Observatory said a mass grave containing the bodies of 230 Shaitat had been found in the province. 
 
 The monitoring group, which relies on a network of activist and medical sources on the ground in Syria, said the victims were shot dead, beheaded or stoned to death in the provinces of Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, Hama, Homs, Hasakeh and Raqqa. 
 
 Women, children included 
 
 Of those killed, 1,175 were civilians who included four children and eight women. 
 
 
 
 The militants also “executed” 502 soldiers and pro-regime militiamen, the monitoring group said. 
 
 
 
 It said ISIS also killed around 120 of its own members, mostly for trying to flee to their home countries, and 80 members of the rival Al-Nusra Front, the Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria. 
 
 
 
 Despite giving a breakdown, the Observatory believes the number killed by ISIS to be far higher, given that many have disappeared and remain unaccounted for. 
 
 
 
 ISIS often records such killings on video and posts footage on the Internet, which experts say is meant to sow fear among civilians and rival groups, as well as to attract new recruits. 
 
 U.S.-led forces launch 13 strikes 
 
 To quash ISIS, U.S.-led forces on Sunday conducted eight air strikes against the militant group in Syria and five strikes on ISIS targets in Iraq, the U.S. military said in a statement. 
 
 In Syria, air strikes centered on the town of Kobani near the Turkish border, the Combined Joint Task Force said. 
 
 The strikes in Iraq included ISIS positions near Sinjar and near Mosul, the task force said. 
 
 
 
 
 
 (With AFP and Reuters) 
 
 Last Update: Sunday, 28 December 2014 KSA 20:28 - GMT 17:28 ||||| The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has beheaded two women and their husbands in eastern Syria's Deir Ezzor province, a monitoring group said. 
 
 The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday that ISIL beheaded the couples after accusing them of using "magic for medicine". 
 
 It is not known what non-traditional health remedy the two couples had sought. 
 
 "It is the first time that the beheading of women, by the use of sword in public, has taken place in Syria," the Observatory's chief, Rami Abdel Rahman, told Al Jazeera. 
 
 Al Jazeera cannot confirm whether the executions represent the first time that women have been beheaded in Syria. Last year, ISIL reportedly beheaded at least three women who were Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in Kobane. 
 
 The more recent beheadings took place in the city of Deir Ezzor and the city of Mayadin. ISIL beheaded the first couple on Sunday and the second couple on Monday. 
 
 INSIDE STORY: ISIL ideology - In the name of Islam? 
 
 ISIL reportedly covered up both women and beheaded them, with many people watching, the Observatory said. 
 
 ISIL executions 
 
 The Observatory said earlier this week that it has documented 3,027 executions carried out by ISIL since the declaration of their 'caliphate', including those of 1,787 civilians, 74 of them children. 
 
 More than half of those executed were civilians and more than half of the executed civilians were members of the Sunni Shaitat tribe, which revolted against ISIL south of Deir Ezzor city in August 2014. 
 
 ISIL reportedly previously beheaded male British and American aid workers, American and Japanese journalists, Kurdish and Syrian soldiers. 
 
 With regard to women, the Observatory documented in late August in 2014, that ISIL gave its fighters 300 Yazidi women in Syria.
– ISIS has killed 1,878 people in Syria—most of them civilians—over the six-month period since it proclaimed a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria in late June, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Among the victims: four children, eight women, members of an opposing Sunni Muslim tribe, soldiers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, insurgents fighting against Assad, foreign activists and journalists, and even about 120 of its own fighters. Although Reuters says it hasn't been able to independently confirm the British organization's numbers, it notes the publicized stonings and beheadings that ISIS has conducted for what it sees as offenses against Islam, ranging from adultery and homosexuality to blasphemy and stealing. By the monitor's count, 1,175 civilians have been beheaded, stoned, or shot; about 930 of those civilians were part of the Shaitat, a Sunni Muslim tribe that fought ISIS in eastern Syria. A mass grave containing 230 Shaitat bodies was said to have been discovered in mid-December, Al Arabiya reports. But the tally may even be on the low side, Al Arabiya notes: The observatory references "hundreds of missing and detainees inside the IS jails, loss of communication with about a thousand men of al-Shaitaat tribe, [and] ... dozens of Kurds who have still been missing since ... September 16." (A recent ISIS execution video is said to have major differences from past videos.)