UK-based monitoring group claims 85 civilians have been killed while state media says as many as 300 died in Isis onslaught
An attack by Islamic State on the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor has left at least 85 civilians and 50 government troops dead, a monitoring group said, with state media denouncing a “massacre”.
Syria’s state news agency Sana, quoting residents, said as many as “300 civilians” were killed in the onslaught.
If confirmed it would be one of the highest tolls for a single day in Syria’s nearly five-year war.
The bloodshed in Deir Ezzor came as regime forces battled Isis in the northern province of Aleppo, killing at least 16 jihadists, and as airstrikes hit the Isis stronghold of Raqqa.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said Isis had advanced into the northern tip of Deir Ezzor and captured the northern suburb of Al-Baghaliyeh.
Initially it reported that 35 Syrian soldiers and allied militiamen had been killed in the multi-front attack, which included a suicide bombing.
But as the day unfolded, the death toll rose, with the Britain-based monitor saying that civilians were among those killed in Deir Ezzor.
It said most of the victims were killed execution-style in Al-Baghaliyeh.
Quoting “local sources”, Sana denounced a “massacre”.
“The [Isis] terrorists carried out a massacre in Al-Baghaliyeh, claiming the lives of around 300 civilians, most of them women, children and elderly people,” the agency said.
It quoted the Syrian prime minister, Wael al-Halaqi, as saying that the “legal and moral responsibility for this barbaric and cowardly massacre ... lies on the shoulders of all the states that support terrorism and that fund and arm takfiri [Sunni extremist] groups”.
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/17/dozens-killed-by-islamic-state-in-massacre-in-syrian-city-of-deir-ezzor