ISIS killing members who want out—monitor

In this Monday, Oct. 13, 2014 photo, a man shows an IS flag at an Islamic bookstore in the Fatih district ofIstanbul. A Sept. 26 clash, described to The Associated Press by Korkut and a half a dozen other university students, was the first in a series of fights at Istanbul University’s Beyazit campus. There has been repeated violence since, and Turkish media have reported scores of arrests. AP

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Islamic State group jihadists have murdered 120 of its own members who tried to flee to their home countries, a monitoring group said Sunday.

The slain IS members are among nearly 2,000 people slaughtered by the Islamists in Syria since announcing their “caliphate” in June, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“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 organization said in a statement.

The Observatory, which relies on a network of activist and medical sources on the ground in Syria, is based in Britain.

It said the victims were shot dead, beheaded or stoned to death in the provinces of Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, Hama, Homs, Hasakeh and Raqa.

Of those killed, 1,175 were civilians who included four children and eight women.

The dead included 930 members of the Shaitat tribe which rose up against IS in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor in the summer.

On December 17, the Observatory said a mass grave containing the bodies of 230 Shaitat had been found in the province.

The jihadists also “executed” 502 soldiers and pro-regime militiamen, the monitoring group said.

Apart from killing its members, IS also murdered 80 members of the rival Al-Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.

Despite giving a breakdown, the Observatory believes the number killed by IS to be far higher, given that many have disappeared and remain unaccounted for.

The jihadist group often records such killings on video and posts footage on the Internet, which experts say is meant to sow fear among civilians and rival groups, as well as to attract new recruits.

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