ISIS new video shows mass execution in Palmyra by boy soldiers

Middle East, News July 4, 2015 , by IRIA No Comments

Video shows 25 Syrian soldiers shot dead by teenaged boys in city’s ancient amphitheater

Militant group ISIS has released a video purportedly showing the horrific execution of 25 captives carried out by boy soldiers. The footage is the latest atrocity to emerge from the city of Palmyra in Syria.

The video shows teenaged boys, clad in desert camouflage and brown bandanas, shooting the soldiers dead on the amphitheater’s stage in front of a huge ISIS flag.

Made with the telltale high production values of previous IS videos, it shows victims believed to be Syrian Army soldiers captured in Homs.

They are paraded on the stage of an ancient amphitheatre in front of hundreds of spectators, some waving the black IS flag.

An extremist leader makes a speech to the audience via a megaphone before they are executed.

The killers are a firing squad of boy soldiers, some of whom appear to be no more than 10-years-old.

The footage has not been independently confirmed.

In the video, only several spectators are seen sitting on the amphitheater’s benches – men and some children.

The mass execution was first reported by the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, on May 27, only several days after the city fell to ISIS. According to AFP, 200 executions were carried out by ISIS in Palmyra and its surrounding areas when it was captured.

Palmyra is home to one of the most famous world heritage sites in the Middle East, renowned for its Roman-era colonnades and 2,000-year-old ruins. The Islamic State group has proclaimed a caliphate to rule over all Muslims in the territory it holds in Syria and Iraq. ISIS militants have a history of carrying out mass killings in the towns and cities they capture and destroying any ancient monuments they consider evidence of paganism.

ISIS seized Palmyra’s ruins from government control in May, leading to fears the ancient Unesco World Heritage site would be destroyed as an act of propaganda.

Although IS was reported to have mined sections of Palmyra, the ruins were left undamaged until now – in what experts saw as a way of taunting the international community.