ISIL 'executed dozens of fighters trying to flee'
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has reportedly executed at least 91 people across Syria within a period of one month, including 39 people from its own ranks.The executions were carried out over accusations of sorcery, sodomy, adultery, banditry, joining and cooperating with rival rebel groups, cooperating with US-led coalition fighting ISIL, cooperating with President Bashar al-Assad's regime forces, and insulting God, the UK-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights reported.
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The Observatory said on Saturday that the executions - mostly beheadings - took place between July 29 and August 29.
At least 32 civilians, including two women, were among the executed, the Observatory said. There were also 11 fighters from different rebel groups and nine members of Assad's troops among them, it said.
Since the declaration of its so-called "Islamic Caliphate" in June last year, ISIL has executed 182 of its own members who had been captured trying to flee the group and return home, the Observatory said.
The Observatory said that over the past year, ISIL executed 1,841 civilians, including 76 children and 95 women, by shooting, beheading, stoning, throwing off from high buildings and burning to death.
The figures cannot independently be verified.
ISIL has taken vast parts of Iraq and Syria and declared a state in territory under its control. Since then, thousands of foreign fighters from all over the world have arrived in Syria and Iraq to fight with the group.
Several reports had emerged of European fighters wanting to return home but were afraid for their lives.
ISIL has released dozens of videos of executions of captured enemy fighters, activists and journalists.
In 2014, it beheaded two US journalists, and one American and two British aid workers in attempts to put pressure on a US-led international coalition, which has been bombing its positions in Syria since September.