ISIL Burns Fighters Alive for Letting Ramadi Fall
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – ISIL fighters who fled to the terror group’s Iraqi stronghold of Mosul after being defeated in Ramadi were burned alive in the town square, sources told FoxNews.com, in an unmistakable message to fighters who may soon be defending the northern city from government forces.
Several residents of Mosul recounted the grisly story for stateside relatives, describing the deadly reception black clad terrorists got when they made it to Mosul, some 250 miles north of the city retaken by Iraqi forces.
They were grouped together and made to stand in a circle,” a former resident of northern Iraq now living in the US but in touch with family back home told FoxNews.com. “And set on fire to die.”
Several Iraqi-Americans and recent refugees with close relatives in Mosul told of ISIL fighters fresh off defeat in Ramadi being shunned – and executed – for not fighting to the death in Ramadi.
Michael Pregent, a terrorism expert and former intelligence adviser to Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq, said such an act isn’t new for the callous terror group. A similar fate was meted out to fighters who lost Saddam’s hometown to Kurdish forces last year.
“There is no surprise on executing ISIS fighters from Ramadi,” he said, using an alternative acronym for ISIL.
“They did the same to fighters after Tikrit.”
The retaking of Ramadi, the capital of the mainly Anbar Province which ISIL took over last May, was a major setback for ISIL.
Just 80 miles west of Baghdad, the city was overrun by ISIL in June, 2014. Iraqi forces recently took it back but the city remains in ruins. Booby-traps, landmines and a broken infrastructure have rendered it mostly uninhabitable for the time being.
With government now mustering to recapture Mosul, which fell to ISIL approximately 18 months ago, an increasingly paranoid ISIL has stepped up its murders of women and children, according to people trapped in the city.
“They come to the house and take the children and accuse them of being spies,” said a stateside Iraqi with knowledge of the situation. “If the mom cries and gets upset at them, they accuse of her being a spy too and take her to the jail and later kill her.”
The terrorist group is feeling the heat of a coming onslaught, said Pregent.
“ISIL is fracturing, paranoid from within,” Pregent continued, noting that ISIL has two intelligence directorates – one for internal threats the other for external ones – and both are focused on unearthing “threats” to their existence within areas under their thumb. “They are using women and children executions to intimidate – the harsher the tactic the more desperate the leadership is.”