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Isis executed scores of children in a year of its caliphate

Others executed by the violent Islamist group include 86 women and 143 of its own members, according to report

Alexander Sehmer
Monday 29 June 2015 11:41 BST
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Isis has 'executed' scores of women and children in areas of Syria controlled by its fighters
Isis has 'executed' scores of women and children in areas of Syria controlled by its fighters (Getty)

The full scale of Isis's year of terror has been detailed in a new report that claims the jihadist group has executed more than 3,000 people in the past 12 months - a tally which includes 74 children.

According to a report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights produced to mark the first anniversary of the establishment of the group's "caliphate", Isis has carried out 3,027 execution killings in a year.

Among the thousands of Arab and Kurdish civilians executed by the group in Syria in the last year, 86 were women.

But the violent Islamist group appears to demonstrate a particular interest in children, releasing videos of children fighting in cages and undertaking military training.

An image posted on 21 October by an Isis-linked Twitter feed, with a caption in Arabic calling these children 'new graduates of Jihad School'

The report also details moves undertaken by the group to entice children to join, which include setting up offices 'cubs of the caliphate' that recruit children to fight for Isis.

Earlier this month the group reportedly crucified two children for not fasting during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.

Isis has used various methods of execution, including beheading, stoning and burning individuals alive.

Many of the charges against those executed are recorded as blasphemy and spying, but others include sorcery, sodomy, practicing as a Shia Muslim.

The group has also executed people it accuses of drug trafficking.

Thousands of people have fled areas of Iraq and Syria taken over by Isis (Getty)

Isis also executed 143 members of its own fighters, the report says.

The report examines killings documented by the monitoring group in the year since Isis announced its 'caliphate' in an area straddling part of Syria and Iraq in June 2014.

It comes less than a week after the media arm of Isis released video footage of fighters murdering more than a dozen men by drowning and decapitation in Iraq.

It also comes amid the killings, claimed by the group, that occurred on Friday in which 38 people were killed by a gunman in Tunisia, and 27 people were killed in a bombing in a Shia mosque in Kuwait.

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