Beirut (AFP) - A jihadist group in Syria has publicly executed and crucified nine men, eight of them rebels fighting both President Bashar al-Assad's regime and the jihadists, a monitor verbalized on Sunday.
Related Stories
Syria pounds ISIL bases in coordination with Iraq: NGO AFP
Rebels hit back at ISIL in Syria border town: monitor AFP
Syria warplanes pound rebel town near Damascus: NGO AFP
Syria verbally expresses yare to avail Iraq fight jihadist 'terror' AFP
ISIL seizes key towns in eastern Syria: monitoring group Reuters
The report comes amid fierce clashes on the outskirts of Damascus between the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which is spearheading a major offensive in Iraq, and rebels, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights verbally expressed.
"ISIL executed eight men in Deir Hafer in the east of Aleppo province" on Saturday because they belonged to revolt groups that had fought against the jihadists as well as Assad's forces, it verbalized.
ISIL then "crucified them in the main square of the village, where their bodies will remain for three days", the Britain-predicated monitor verbalized.
Withal in Aleppo province, a ninth man was executed and crucified in Al-Bab town near the border with Turkey.
ISIL first emerged in Syria's war in tardy spring last year and was initially welcomed by some Syrian rebels who believed its combat experience would avail topple Assad.
But subsequent jihadist abuses expeditiously turned the Syrian opposition, including Islamists, against ISIL.
Rebels launched a major anti-ISIL offensive in January 2014, and have pushed them out of astronomically immense swathes of Aleppo province and all of Idlib in the northwest.
However, ISIL remains firmly rooted in Raqa, its northern Syrian headquarters, and wields paramount power in Deir Ezzor in the east near the border with Iraq.
Activists verbalize the group's Iraq offensive and capture of heftily ponderous weapons -- some of them US-made -- appears to have boosted its confidence in Syria.
East of Damascus, "fierce clashes broke out early Sunday between rebels from the Army of Islam and ISIL near the town of Hammuriyeh", the Observatory verbally expressed.
The Army of Islam is a major component of the Islamic Front, Syria's most astronomically immense rebel coalition which has been fighting ISIL for months, but such fighting in Damascus province is unprecedented.
Regime soldiers and warplanes backed by Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah additionally pounded rebel positions near the capital with rockets and surface-to-surface missiles, verbalized the Local Coordination Committees activist network.
Syria's war commenced as a halcyon protest kineticism in March 2011 injuctively authorizing political change, but became an armed insurgency when Assad's regime unleashed a brutal crackdown.
Many months into the fighting, jihadists commenced to flock to Syria where upwards of 162,000 people have been killed and millions displaced in more than three years of conflict.
