The Islamic State terrorist group 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.
Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 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, AFP reported.
Khaled al-Homsi, an activist from Palmyra, said IS had 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, who works with the local Palmyra Coordination Committee activist group said. Mohammad al-Ayed, also an activist from Palmyra, said the columns were “archeological, and there are many like them still present in Palmyra.”
“IS is doing this for the media attention, so that IS can say that it is the most villainous, and so it can get people’s attention,” al-Ayed said. The Islamic State group has captured swathes of territory across Iraq and Syria to create a self-styled “caliphate” where it enforces an extreme form of Islamic rule.
IS considers pre-Islamic artefacts to be idolatrous and therefore worthy of destruction. Since the terrorists seized Palmyra from government forces in May, they have destroyed multiple sites and historic artefacts, including its celebrated temples of Bel and Baal Shamin as well as several funerary towers.
