...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group are holding hostage at least 50 civilians, almost half of them women, seized in a raid on a village in central Syria, a monitor said.
They were kidnapped from the village of Mabujeh in Hama province on March 31, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
News of the kidnappings had been kept quiet because of ongoing negotiations for their release, but the talks have since faltered, said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.
Ten of those taken, including six women, are Ismailis, a minority sect that is an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The remaining 40 are Sunni Moslems, including at least 15 women.
"There are fears that the women are being taken as slaves," Abdel Rahman told AFP.
He said the Ismailis were kidnapped because IS considers them "infidels," and that the Sunnis -- although from the same sect as IS fighters -- were taken because IS viewed them as "loyal to the Ismailis."
Mabujeh, east of the lovely provincial capital Hama, has a population of Sunnis, Ismailis and Alawites, another offshoot of Shiite Islam that is the sect of
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Scourge of Qusayr...
and his clan.
On March 31, IS executed at least 37 civilians in Mabujeh, including two children, by "burning, beheading, and firing on them," the Observatory said.
IS has regularly targeted minority sects in Syria, especially Shiites it accuses of apostasy, as well as Sunnis who it alleges have violated its interpretation of Islam.
It has also carried out mass kidnappings of Kurds and Assyrian Christians in Syria, and members of the Yazidi faith in neighboring Iraq.
In another attack on a minority village in Syria, a boom-mobile went
kaboom!Friday in the Alawite neighborhood of Hay al-Arman in Homs city, the Observatory said.
Abdel Rahman told AFP that one child was killed and at least 10 people were maimed in the kaboom.
He could not specify who was behind the boom-mobile, but Syrian state television
... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
said a "terrorist attack" had struck the area.
Abdel Rahman said Hay al-Arman was under regime control and was a "stronghold" of pro-government militias.
Alawite areas in Homs have been under attack by jihadists, including a brutal suicide kaboom at a school in October 2014 that left 54 dead, among them 47 children.
In the northern city of Raqa, which IS has declared the capital of its self-styled "caliphate," 16 people were killed in a series of regime air strikes on the city and its suburbs.