Executions by ISIS refers here to killing by beheading, immolation,

shooting Shooting is the act or process of discharging a projectile from a ranged weapon (such as a gun, bow, crossbow, slingshot, or blowpipe). Even the acts of launching flame, artillery, darts, harpoons, grenades, rockets, and guided missiles ...

or other means of military and civilian people (such as captives and "criminals") by the

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant An Islamic state is a state that has a form of government based on Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a translation of the Arabic term ...

(ISIL). ISIL has released a number of propaganda/publicity videos of beheadings or shootings of captives. Houtat Sulūk is reported to be a mass grave.

Military captives

By June 2014, according to United Nations reports, ISIL had killed hundreds of prisoners of war and over 1,000 civilians. Specific incidents involving the killing of military prisoners including the mass killing of up to 250 Syrian Army soldiers near

Tabqa Air base Tabaqah or Tabqa may refer to: * Tabqa Dam, a dam on the Euphrates River * At Tabqah, now known as Al-Thawrah, a city in Syria near the Tabqa Dam * At-Tabaqa, a Palestinian village near Hebron * Tabaqa, Jordan, an archeological site; see Natufian ...

,Video shows Islamic State executes scores of Syrian soldiers
. Reuters. 28 August 2014. and killings that took place in Camp Speicher (1,095–1,700 Iraqi soldiers shot and "thousands" more "missing") and the Shaer gas field (200 Syrian soldiers shot). ISIL was reported to have beheaded about 100 foreign fighters as deserters who tried to leave

Raqqa Raqqa ( ar, ٱلرَّقَّة, ar-Raqqah, also and ) (Kurdish: Reqa/ ڕەقە) is a city in Syria on the northeast bank of the Euphrates River, about east of Aleppo. It is located east of the Tabqa Dam, Syria's largest dam. The Hellenistic, ...

. Muath al-Kasasbeh, a Royal Jordanian Air Force pilot whose F-16 fighter aircraft crashed near

, Syria, on 24 December 2014 during the

international military intervention against ISIL In response to rapid territorial gains made by the so-called Islamic State during the first half of 2014, and its universally condemned executions, reported human rights abuses and the fear of further spillovers of the Syrian Civil War, many s ...

, was captured by ISIL, and on 3 February 2015 released a video showing al-Kasasbeh being burned to death while trapped inside a cage.

Civilian captives

Among the known killings of religious and minority group civilians carried out by ISIL are those in the villages and towns of Qiiniyeh (70–90 Yazidis killed), Hardan (60 Yazidis killed),

Sinjar Sinjar ( ar, سنجار, Sinjār; ku, شنگال, translit=Şingal, syr, ܫܝܓܪ, Shingar) is a town in the Sinjar District of the Nineveh Governorate in northern Iraq. It is located about five kilometers south of the Sinjar Mountains. Its p ...

(200–500 Yazidis killed), Ramadi Jabal (60–70 Yazidis killed),

Dohula Dohula (also written Duhola or Dohla, ar, دهولا; ku, دوهۆلا, translit=Dohula, also known in Arabic as ''Qadisiyah'') is a village located in the Sinjar District of the Ninawa Governorate in northern Iraq. The village is located north ...

(50 Yazidis killed),

Khana Sor Khana Sor (also written Khanasor, ku, خاناسۆر, translit=Xanasor, ar, خانصور, meaning: ''red house'') is a town located in the Sinjar District of the Ninawa Governorate in Iraq. The town is located north of the Sinjar Mount. It bel ...

(100 Yazidis killed), Hardan (250–300 Yazidis killed), al-Shamal (dozens of Yazidis killed), Kocho (400 Yazidis killed and 1,000 abducted), Jadala (14 Yadizis killed) and Beshir (700 Shia Turkmen killed), and others committed near

Mosul Mosul ( ar, الموصل, al-Mawṣil, ku, مووسڵ, translit=Mûsil, Turkish: ''Musul'', syr, ܡܘܨܠ, Māwṣil) is a major city in northern Iraq, serving as the capital of Nineveh Governorate. The city is considered the second larg ...

(670 Shia inmates of the Badush prison killed), and in

Tal Afar Tal Afar ( ar, تَلْعَفَر, Talʿafar, ) is a city in the Nineveh Governorate of northwestern Iraq, located 63 km (39 mi) west of Mosul, 52 km (32 mi) east of Sinjar

Journalists

ISIL has tortured and murdered both local and foreign journalists, creating what Reporters Without Borders calls "news blackholes" in areas controlled by ISIL. ISIL fighters have reportedly been given written directions to kill or capture journalists. * James Wright Foley (October 18, 1973 August 19, 2014) was an American freelance journalist and photojournalist of the Syrian Civil War when he was abducted on November 22, 2012, in northwestern Syria. Foley was the first American citizen to be killed by " Jihadi John". James Foley's beheading by ISIL received wide condemnation in the United States. * Steven Joel Sotloff (May 11, 1983 – September 2, 2014) was an

Israeli-American , native_name_lang = , image = , caption = , population = 110,000–150,000 , popplace = New York metropolitan area, Los Angeles metropolitan area, Miami metropolitan area, and other large metropolitan ar ...

journalist for ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

'' magazine and ''

The Jerusalem Post ''The Jerusalem Post'' is a broadsheet newspaper based in Jerusalem, founded in 1932 during the British Mandate of Palestine by Gershon Agron as ''The Palestine Post''. In 1950, it changed its name to ''The Jerusalem Post''. In 2004, the paper ...

'', although the ''Post'' disavowed any relationship once Sotloff's life was threatened. In 2013, he was kidnapped in Aleppo, Syria, and was held captive by Islamic militants. On September 2, 2014, a video was released purporting to show " Jihadi John" beheading Steven Sotloff. * On January 8, 2015, ISIL members in Libya claimed to have executed Tunisian journalists Sofiene Chourabi and Nadhir Ktari who disappeared in September 2014. * In January 2015 ISIL threatened to kill two Japanese hostages,

Kenji Goto was a Japanese freelance video journalist covering wars and conflicts, refugees, poverty, AIDS, and child education around the world. In October 2014, he was captured and held hostage by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants after en ...

Jogo, a journalist, and Haruna Yukawa, a military company operator, unless a ransom of 200 million

USD The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

is paid. By the end of the month, the group released another video of the beheading of Goto, in which Jihadi John proclaimed to Japanese prime minister

Shinzō Abe Shinzo Abe ( ; ja, 安倍晋三, Hepburn: , ; 21 September 1954 – 8 July 2022) was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 20 ...

"because of your reckless decision to take part in an unwinnable war, this knife will not only slaughter Kenji, but will also carry on and cause carnage wherever your people are found. So let the nightmare for Japan begin."

Aid workers

ISIL has also murdered aid workers. * David Haines (May 9, 1970 – September 13, 2014) was abducted in March 2013 by ISIL while working in Syria for the humanitarian aid group

Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development, commonly known as ACTED, is a French humanitarian non-governmental organisation. It is a non-governmental, non-political and non-profit organisatio. ACTED works in 37 countries responding to emer ...

assessing the Atmeh refugee camp near the Turkish border and the Syrian province of Idlib. A video of the lead-up and aftermath of David Haines' beheading, entitled "A Message to the Allies of America", was released by ISIL on September 13, 2014. *Hervé Gourdel (September 12, 1959 – September 24, 2014) was a French citizen and mountaineering guide. Gourdel was kidnapped on September 21, 2014, while hiking in the Djurdjura National Park in Algeria. The following day, an at the time recently formed ISIL affiliate in Algeria, Jund al-Khilafah, released a video which showed Hervé Gourdel being held hostage. The group threatened to kill Gourdel if the French government continued to conduct airstrikes against ISIL. On September 24, they carried through on threats to behead him after a 24-hour deadline passed. The beheading was captured in a video titled "A Message of Blood for French Government." * Alan Henning (August 15, 1967 – October 3, 2014) was a British humanitarian aid worker. Henning was the fourth Western hostage killed by ISIL. Henning was captured during ISIL's occupation of the Syrian city of Al-Dana in December 2013, where he was helping with humanitarian relief. The

British Foreign Office The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) is a department of the Government of the United Kingdom. Equivalent to other countries' ministries of foreign affairs, it was created on 2 September 2020 through the merger of the Foreig ...

withheld news of Henning's capture while they attempted to negotiate his release. Alan Henning was shown at the end of David Haines's beheading video, released on September 13, 2014, and referred to by " Jihadi John" as the next victim. A video of Henning's beheading was released by ISIL on October 3, 2014. * Peter Edward Kassig (February 19, 1988 – 2014), also known by the name Abdul-Rahman Kassig which he assumed in captivity, was 26 years old at the time he was beheaded. He was the adopted child of Ed, a school teacher, and Paula Kassig, a nurse. On October 1, 2013, as he was on his way to Deir Ezzour in eastern Syria to deliver food and medical supplies to refugees, Kassig was taken captive by ISIL. While in captivity, Kassig – formerly a

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's ...

– converted to Islam and changed his name to Abdul-Rahman Kassig, sometime between October and December 2013. On October 3, 2014, his parents released a video in which they stressed that his conversion to Islam was not forced, and that his path to conversion began before he was taken captive. On November 16, 2014, ISIL posted a video showing " Jihadi John" standing over a severed human head. The beheading itself was not shown in the video. The

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...

later confirmed the person killed was Kassig. * ISIL claimed that U.S. hostage

Kayla Mueller Kayla Jean Mueller (August 14, 1988 – February 6, 2015) was an American human rights activist and humanitarian aid worker from Prescott, Arizona. She was taken captive in August 2013 in Aleppo, Syria, after leaving a Doctors Without Borders ho ...

was killed in the Jordanian airstrike on

on 5 February 2015. However, some experts believe that she may have been killed before the date of the video's release, in order for ISIL to try to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Jordan by blaming her death on the Jordanian airstrikes. Shortly thereafter President Obama confirmed the death of Mueller by ISIL. * On November 19, 2015, Chinese national Fan Jinghui ( 樊京辉) and Norwegian national Ole Johan Grimsgaard-Ofstad were murdered by being shot by ISIL, and pictures were released in ISIL's magazine Dabiq.

References

{{Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant Prisoner of war massacres

Military captives

Civilian captives

Journalists

Aid workers

See also

References