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. The takeover of the base of Division 17 came as the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria said on Friday that 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.
Video shot by jihadists and distributed on YouTube showed IS fighters apparently inside Division 17 living quarters burning a portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The jihadists also posted photographs online of the bodies of decapitated soldiers strewn across the ground. In one, six bloodied heads were lined up together on the ground, and in another three heads lay in a field.
Pictures of headless bodies, most wearing military uniform, were also distributed on the Internet. 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. Also 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 its near-total control in Raqa province and Deir Ezzor on the Iraq border. In June, the jihadist group proclaimed an Islamic "caliphate" straddling Syria and Iraq. Despite opposition by poorly-armed rebels fighting both the army and IS, the jihadists have made advances in several areas of Syria, whose three-year war has killed more than 170,000 people. "There is a clear shift in the IS strategy. It has moved from consolidating its total control in areas under its grip. It is now spreading," said Abdel Rahman. "For IS, fighting the regime is not about bringing down Assad. It is about expanding its control," he said.