A video published on Thursday showed fighters of the al
Qaeda-linked Nusra Front in Syria executing 11 men they accused of
taking part in massacres by President Bashar al-Assad's forces.
The
film is believed to be from eastern Deir al-Zor province and dates from
some time in 2012, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights, an opposition monitoring group.
The Observatory's head,
Rami Abdelrahman, said the Nusra Front has recently been releasing
several videos of their past operations. He said the man seen executing
the prisoners in the video - a Nusra commander - had been killed in
March 2013 in battles with local tribes in the province.
The
footage shows the commander, his face covered in a black balaclava,
shooting each prisoner in the back of the head as they kneeled,
blindfolded and lined up in a row in the sand.
"The sharia court
for the eastern region in Deir al-Zor has sentenced to death these
apostate soldiers that committed massacres against our brothers and
families in Syria," the executioner said on the video.
Islamist
militants with black flags shouted "God is great" as each man was shot.
The executioner returned to some victims, firing more bullets into them
to make sure they were dead.
Videos of executions and torture have
become increasingly common in Syria, where more than 94,000 people have
been killed in a conflict now in its third year, according to the
British-based Observatory, which has a network of activists in Syria.
Such videos posted online are hard to verify due to government restrictions on access for independent media.
The
Nusra video is the second video to be published in the past two days
showing executions by fighters who say they are from al Qaeda-linked
groups.
A video issued on Wednesday from the northern province of
Raqqa, which is controlled by Islamist rebels, showed three blindfolded
men sitting on the curb of a central roundabout before being shot in the
head with a pistol.
A man speaking in the video said the
executions were revenge for killings in the coastal town of Banias two
weeks ago. Photos and videos of the alleged Banias massacre showed
dozens of mutilated bodies, many of them children, lying in the streets.
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