oped: Aren't y'all Obama supporters/voters proud you placed this Muslim Brotherhood POTUS /self appointed King of the LGBTQA movement into office for 8 years of pure hell and chaos ? #Morons
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Damascus (AFP) - Islamic State
fighters have seized a Syrian army base in the northern province of
Raqa, killing scores of troops and beheading some of them, a monitoring
group said Saturday.
But in the
central Homs region, government forces recaptured Al-Shaar gas field,
seized by IS a week before, the monitor and Syria's army said.
The
jihadist takeover of the base of Division 17 came as the UN Commission
of Inquiry on Syria said IS fighters accused of atrocities would be
added to a list of war crimes indictees.
In the two-day assault on the
base in Raqa province, an IS bastion, the jihadists killed at least 85
soldiers, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
More
than 50 troops were summarily executed, 19 others were killed in a
double suicide bombing and at least 16 more died in the assault launched
early Thursday.
Hundreds of
troops "withdrew on Friday to safe places -- either to nearby villages
whose residents oppose IS or to nearby Brigade 93 -- but the fate of
some 200 remains unknown," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
"Some
of the executed troops were beheaded, and their bodies and severed
heads put on display in Raqa city," an IS stronghold, he told AFP.
The jihadists also posted photographs online of the bodies of decapitated soldiers strewn across the ground.
- Headless bodies -
In
one, six bloodied heads were lined up together on the ground, and other
pictures showed headless bodies, mostly wearing combat fatigues.
Abdel
Rahman said IS intended the display as "a message to the people of
Raqa, to tell them it is strong, that it isn't going anywhere, and to
terrify" opponents.
But government forces retook the
key Shaar gas field in Homs province, nearly a week after it fell to
IS, who killed some 270 government troops in the attack, the Observatory
said.
"The army has succeeded in ejecting the jihadists, and it now controls the site," Abdel Rahman said.
The Syrian army also said its forces and regime paramilitaries "took total control of Al-Shaar mountain and its gas field".
It "killed many terrorists from the so-called Islamic State," the statement carried by state news agency SANA said.
In the northeastern province of Hasakeh, the Observatory reported heavy
fighting between jihadists and government forces in an area where IS
killed at least 50 soldiers on Friday.
Elsewhere in northern Syria, 30
troops and pro-regime paramilitaries were killed in an overnight ambush
in Aleppo province, the Observatory said.
IS,
which first emerged in Syria's war in spring 2013, has since imposed
near-total control in Raqa province and Deir Ezzor on the Iraq border.
In June, the group proclaimed a "caliphate" straddling Syria and Iraq.
Despite
opposition by poorly armed rebels fighting both the army and IS, the
jihadists have advanced in several areas of Syria, whose three-year war
has killed more than 170,000 people.
"For IS, fighting the regime is not about bringing down Assad. It is about expanding its control," said Abdel Rahman.
- US suicide bomber -
IS was emboldened by a June offensive in Iraq when swathes of the north and west fell out of Baghdad's control.
Syrian rebels say IS transported heavy weapons captured from fleeing Iraqi troops into Syria.
On
Friday, Brazilian Paulo Pinheiro, who heads the UN Commission of
Inquiry on Syria, told reporters in New York IS "are good candidates for
the list" of possible war crime indictees and he was looking into
"perpetrators from all sides".
Syria's
Al-Qaeda affiliate the Al-Nusra Front meanwhile released a video of a
young suicide bomber from Florida who blew himself up at an army post in
the northwest on May 25.
Moner Mohammad Abu Salha, alias
Abu Hurayra al-Amriki, was believed to be the first American to carry
out such an attack in Syria's war.
The
Observatory also said six children and three women were among 15
civilians killed on Friday in rebel mortar fire on army-held areas of
Aleppo city.
Once Syria's commercial capital, the northern metropolis has been divided into regime and rebel-held areas since July 2012.
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