IS Video Shows Troops’ Deaths in Syria Archaeological Site

In the video, a group of several hundred men watch as the soldiers are forced to their knees, guns to their heads, and executed.The BBC reports that the Islamic State has said that the executed men were soldiers captured in the city of Homs.

Stills from the video showed the killers to be young males, possibly even as young as 13 or 14.

The video was distributed by accounts known to be linked with Islamic State militants.

In close-up shots of the men waiting to be killed, they appear to have been beaten on the face.

When Islamic State fighters captured the ruins of Nimrud, once the capital of the Assyrian Empire located in modern day Iraq, they used dynamite to blow up its ancient treasures.

In the footage that emerged on Saturday, the executioners that seem to be teenagers shoot dead the soldiers dressed in green and brown military uniforms on the stage of the city’s amphitheater.

Daesh militants are said to have carried out over 200 executions in and around ancient Palmyra after capturing the city, as mentioned by British-based watchdog Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The group has been recently estimated IS has been responsible for the deaths of 3,027 civilians, rebels, and soldiers since the declaration of its alleged “caliphate”.

Last week, it said it destroyed six busts from the ancient desert city, a UNESCO World Heritage site, which was a center for art and commerce in Roman times.

Iraqi police chiefs fear the number of youngsters being brainwashed by IS will only rise, with militants having kidnapped more than 500 children in recent weeks.

The fearsome symbolism of holding executions at the Roman theater anxious Syria’s antiquities director Mamoun Abdelkarim, who told AFP The murders could mean the beginning of “the group’s barbarism and savagery against the ancient monuments of Palmyra”.

The men were shot in the ancient city of Palmyra.