Deir e-Zor assassination campaigns targeting Islamic State ‘active again’

Last week, the bodies of five members of the Islamic State were discovered along the Deir e-Zor–Hasakah highway, as a renewed wave of IS assassinations emerges in Syria’s eastern province.

The killers are men whose brothers were executed by the Islamic State, Mujahid a-Shami, the director of the local media campaign Deir e-Zor is Being Slaughtered Silently, tells Syria Direct’s Ammar Hammou. “These operations against IS have become active again.”

Q: The media has reported on the killing of several IS members whose bodies were left with a note on them. What are the details?

Our page was the source of this story about the killing of IS supporters. A group of men whose names I cannot disclose executed five IS members, including their Chechen emir [leader], two months after they kidnapped them near Deir e-Zor city.

IS had previously killed the brothers of the kidnappers, executing them and then crucifying them.

Sometime after kidnapping the IS members, the vigilante group then executed the Islamic State fighters and left their bodies near the Deir e-Zor-Hasakah highway. With the bodies was a note reading: “Blood for blood and destruction for destruction.”

On top of that, the same group killed the Libyan Abu al-Dahdah and left his body near the Deir e-Zor oil field, leaving a note threatening a local Syrian Islamic State leader.

Q: Is Deir e-Zor witnessing a new wave of assassinations targeting IS?

A little while ago, this type of thing was happening frequently. Every week there would be more than one assassination, but then in January IS executed approximately 120 individuals accused of forming anti-IS groups, which led to a temporary end to the assassinations. However, the assassination operations against IS have become active again.