Militants execute 700 in Syria: rights group

‘Islamists’ have executed 700 members of a tribe they have been battling in eastern Syria during the past one week, the majority of them civilians, a human rights monitoring group and activists have said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has tracked violence on all sides of the three-year-old conflict, said beheadings were used to execute many of the al-Sheitaat tribe, which is from Deir al-Zor province. The conflict between the ‘jihadists’ and the al-Sheitaat tribe, who number about 70,000, flared after the militants took over two oil fields in July. ‘Those who were executed are all al-Sheitaat,’ Observatory director Rami Abdelrahman said by telephone from Britain. ‘Some were arrested, judged and killed.’ An activist in Deir al-Zor who spoke on condition of anonymity said the Islamic State fighters executed 300 people in one day in the town of Ghraneij, one of the three main towns of the al-Sheitaat tribal heartland, earlier this week. The rest were killed later on, he added, according to a news agency.