BEIRUT/AMMAN: Islamic State has crushed a pocket of resistance to its control in eastern Syria, crucifying two people and executing 23 others in the past five days, a monitoring group said yesterday.
The insurgents, who are also making rapid advances in Iraq, are tightening their grip in Syria, of which they now control roughly a third, mostly rural areas in the north
and east.
Fighters from the Al Sheitaat tribe in eastern Deir Al Zor had tried to resist Islamic State’s advance this month, according to residents near the area and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring organisation.
In Al Shaafa, a town on the banks of the Euphrates river, Islamic State beheaded two men from the Al Sheitaat clan on Sunday, the Observatory said, and gave residents a 12-hour deadline yesterday to hand over members of the tribe.
In other parts of Deir Al Zor province, the militants crucified two men for the crime of “dealing with apostates” in the city of Mayadin, and two others were beheaded for blasphemy in the nearby town of Al Bulel, the Observatory said.
Islamic State, which has fought the Syrian army, Kurdish militias and Sunni Muslim tribal forces, has made rapid gains in Syria since it seized northern Iraq’s largest city, Mosul, on June 10, and declared an Islamic caliphate.
The Observatory said a further 19 men from the Al Sheitaat tribe were executed on Thursday, 18 shot dead and one beheaded, on the outskirts of Deir Al Zor city. It said the men worked at an oil installation.
“No one will now dare from the other tribes to move against Islamic State after the defeat of the
Al Sheitaat,” said Ahmad Ziyada
Al Qaissi, an Islamic State sympathiser contacted by Skype from Mayadin.
Tribal sources say the conflict between Islamic State and the
Al Sheitaat tribe, who number about 70,000, flared after Islamic State took over of two oil fields in July.
One of those, Al Omar, is the biggest oil and gas field in Deir Al Zor and has been a lucrative source of funds for rebel groups.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama yesterday urged a quick political transition in Iraq in a rebuke to controversial prime minister Nouri Al Maliki.
Obama said that he as well as Vice President Joe Biden called prime minister-designate Haidar Al Abadi to offer support, as US forces conduct air strikes against Sunni Islamist extremists who have swept across Iraq.
Stressing his position that there is “no American military solution” to the Iraq crisis, Obama called Abadi’s nomination to replace the controversial Nouri Al Maliki “a promising step.”
“The only lasting solution is for Iraqis to come together and form an inclusive government,” Obama said, after criticism that Maliki has ruled divisively to advance Iraq’s Shia majority.
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