 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. 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. 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. Rami Abdulrahman, the head of the Syrian monitoring group, told Reuters that Islamic State killed 1,175 civilians, including eight women and four children. 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. 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.
– 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.)