IS reportedly executes 'dozens' of captured Syrian soldiers

Islamic State fighters have executed "dozens" of Syrian soldiers it captured during its storming of a key northern air base this week, a monitoring group said on Thursday.

The militants boasted on Twitter that they had killed 200 defeated troops and posted video of what they said was the garrison in headlong flight.

"Dozens of Syrian soldiers captured while fleeing... after the IS overran Tabqa airbase were executed by the jihadists during the night," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The militants seized the airport on Sunday after weeks of bitter fighting with loyalist forces, cementing their control over Raqa province, capital of their self-declared Islamic "caliphate".

Abdel Rahman said the defeated garrison comprised 1,400 soldiers, 200 of whom were killed and 700 of whom managed to escape.

The other 500 remain on the run. Dozens were captured on Wednesday night as they attempted to cross the desert to government-held territory in the Orontes Valley to the west.

IS posted video footage showing young men in underwear being marched barefoot along a desert road. Militants shouted "Islamic State" and "There's no going back".

In Syria, the group controls all of Raqa province and much of Deir Ezzor further down the Euphrates Valley towards the Iraqi border.

It also controls most of the Sunni Arab heartland of neighbouring Iraq, north and west of Baghdad, including second city Mosul.

It has repeatedly posted often gruesome videos, both as a warning to those joining up to the Syrian army and as a propaganda tool to recruit volunteers from the wider Islamic world.

Attack on IS

While IS militants killed dozens of Syrian army solders, at least 24 Islamic State militants and seven civilians were killed in separate incidents of violence in Anbar and Nineveh provinces on Wednesday, according to military and hospital sources.

“Armed troops supported by the air force launched a military operation on IS-controlled town of Fallujah in Anbar,” Lieutenant-General Rashid Felid told Anadolu Agency correspondent.

He said at least 22 self-proclaimed Islamic State fighters were killed and two vehicles equipped with weapons were destroyed during the clashes.

Separately, hospital sources reported that the IS executed seven civilians in the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh.

Sources close to the Peshmerga forces stated that US aircraft had launched air strikes on the northeastern part of Mosul, killing two Islamic State militants.

The Islamic State has driven an estimated 1.2 million Iraqis from their homes in a humanitarian crisis that is engulfing the area since the uprising began at the beginning of June. The US has conducted dozens of airstrikes on IS forces since 7 August.

Elsewhere in the region, a joint attack launched by Syrian opposition groups in the city of Aleppo has killed 43 IS militants, according to the Syrian Shahba Press Agency.

The 43 militants included two American nationals fighting for the group, he said.