New ISIS video purportedly shows mass executions of Christians
Video shows execution of Ethiopian Christians on beach and in desert by Islamic State terrorists in Libya; ISIS tells Mideast Christians: Convert or face death.
According to YNetNews.com:
A new video published Sunday by the Islamic State terror group claims to show two mass executions in Libya. In the video, reportedly shot in Libya, a group of Coptic Ethiopians is executed by a firing squad and another group by a knife to the throat.
The video shows ISIS operatives marching their victims, who don the group’s now infamous orange jump suits, along a coastline, presumably in Libya; the second group is dressed in black jump suits and was marched and executed in the desert.
According to ISIS, the first group being executed was “adherent of the Ethiopian church” – a possible reference to Coptic Christians – and the execution purportedly took place in Libya’s Fezzan region.
The second mass execution reportedly took place in the Barqa region. The group failed to name their victims, whose throats they proceeded to cut.
Throughout the long and graphic video, ISIS terrorists are seen taking down crosses and replacing them with Islamic State group flags. It is possible the second group consisted of Egyptian Copts, similar to a previous video in which the group murdered 21 of the faith’s adherents in Libya.
We will not show the video here. You can see the video at YNetNews if you choose to view it.
“Despite the cross, we have returned,” the ISIS narrator said with guns pointed at the first group.
According to the video, the execution is a message to Christians in the region according to which, if they fail to convert to Islam they will have to pay with their lives or face execution at the hands of ISIS. A similar fate befell the Christian community of Raqqa, Syria.
ISIS has gained a significant foothold in Libya, posing a clear and imminent threat to both Egypt and Italy.
Aljazeera states:
A new video from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) purportedly shows the group killing captured Ethiopian Christians in Libya.
The 29-minute video released online on Sunday shows two groups of dark-skinned captives. It says one group is held by an ISIL affiliate in eastern Libya and the other by an affiliate in the south.
A masked fighter delivers a long statement before the video switches between footage of the captives in the south being shot to death and the captives in the east being beheaded on a beach.
The footage released online shows one group of about 12 men being beheaded by armed men on a beach and another group of at least 16 being shot in the head in a desert area.
It was not immediately clear who the captives were.
Redwan Hussein, an Ethiopian government spokesman, told Reuters that he could not immediately confirm the nationalities of the victims.
In a separate interview with AFP news agency, Hussein condemned the killing “whether they are Ethiopians or not.”
Ethiopia’s embassy in Egypt was working to verify if those killed were indeed Ethiopians, he added.
The video bore the official logo of the ISIL media arm Al-Furqan and resembled previous videos released by the group.
A text on the screen identifies the men as “followers of the cross from the enemy Ethiopian Church”.
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