At least 116 people have been killed by the Islamic State (ISIS) before leaving the Qariatain in the province of Homs (central Syria) in the face of advancing forces loyal to the government of Damascus. The Syrian Observatory for the Defence of Human Rights, an NGO that has a network of informers on the ground, said on Monday that the killing of so-called “collaborators with the regime” took place during the last three weeks.
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The Syrian Regular army and its Shia allies from Iran and Lebanon reconquered last weekend the locality, which had been taken by the ISIS at the beginning of the month in an offensive launched from the east of the country Arab E. Jihadis are being subjected in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor to the harassment of President Bashar al-Assad’s troops, backed by Russia, and the Kurdish-Arab militias of the Syrian Democratic Front, a rebel coalition supported by the United States.
The Observatory said that most of the victims were “executed” by a headshot or butchered in the 48 hours preceding the fall of Al Qariatain, located in a deserted area on one of the routes linking Damascus with Palmira. The city is more than 300 kilometers from the current war scene in Deir Ezzor, a strategic border region with Iraq and rich in oil. The Islamic State, which had already occupied it in 2015, was evicted for the first time last year by the army after an intense bombing campaign of Russian aviation.
Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian NGO that recounts from the United Kingdom the victims of the war that erupted in 2011, assured France Presse that part of the fighters of the ISIS who intervened in Al Qariatain came from “sleeping cells” that were activated in the Area and whose members know the eventual relationship that neighbors can maintain with the regime of El Asad.
