Beirut: Jihadist group of the Islamic State executed three people in Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra by binding them to three historic columns and blowing them up, a monitoring group said.
Head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel Rehman, said IS on Sunday “tied three individuals it had arrested from Palmyra and its outskirts to the columns and executed them by blowing up” three columns.
An activist from Palmyra, Khaled-al-Homsi, said IS is yet to inform local residents who the executed individuals were or why they had been killed.
“There was no one there to see (the execution). The columns were destroyed and IS has prevented anyone from heading to the site,” Homsi told AFP yesterday.
As the jihadist seized Palmya from regime forces in May, they have destroyed multiple sites and historic artifacts, including its celebrated temples of Bel and Baal Shamin as well as several funerary towers.
IS has used Palmyra’s grand amphitheater for a massacre in which child members of the group killed 25 Syrian soldiers, execution-style, in front of residents. Palmyra’s ruins are on the UNESCO World Heritage list, and before the war around 150,000 tourists a year visited the town.
