Lined up and executed, their severed heads put on display as a warning to others: Horrific new photographs of ISIS atrocities

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
Up to 500 prisoners from the minority Yazidi faith are said to have been killed by ‘death squads’ of jihadi gunmen in recent days.
Some 40 Yazidi children are reported to be among the dead, after being driven from their homes by the brutal Islamist militant offensive in northern Iraq.
Chilling images of the victims have now emerged, some released by the group’s expertly managed propaganda machine.

Prisoners: Members of the Sunni Shaitat tribe are rounded up and marched to their deaths in Syria by fighters from ISIS in a series of horrific images posted online by the jihadist group

Ruthless: Bent double and barefooted, with their hands are bound behind their backs with rope, the prisoners are marched to the execution site in the desert near Deir ez Zor in Syra

Advancing Islamic State fighters have filmed themselves massacring prisoners, some of whom have been crucified or beheaded. Pictures show armed fighters, appearing to laugh over slumped bodies of dead civilians, who had been lined up and shot in the head and back. 
Some images, posted online, show militants posing next to dead Yazidi men.
One horrific set of photographs, which emerged yesterday, shows the militants rounding up and executing tribesmen.  The prisoners were marched into the desert and made to kneel on the dusty ground, before being systematically shot in the head.

Crimes against humanity: The captives are then lined up and ordered to kneel down on the dusty ground

Barbaric: Around 20 ISIS fighters stand behind the line of men and the squad of jihadists begin to murder the prisoners

A couple of jihadists approach the dead prisoners and finish off any survivors from point-blank range

Sick: A jihadist appears to be smiling as he holds a terrified man by his hair and begins to slice through his neck with a hunting knife

‘The punishment of those who fight Allah and his Messenger and spread mischief on earth is to kill or crucify or cut off their hands and feet,’ the militant group declared.
There were also reports of children being beheaded, crucifixions and amputations. One said trapped Yazidi women were being raped while their husbands were slaughtered.
As each town is taken, anyone opposing the Islamic State is either killed or given the option to convert to Islam and pay a fine. Others try to abandon their homes and flee. Six weeks ago, the Islamic State executed at least 160 prisoners in just four days in the northern city of Tikrit, publishing pictures of men forced to lie with their hands tied behind their backs while they were shot. 
A final set of images showed the victims’ bodies piled up.
The brutal tactics of the group, which broke from Al Qaeda, are the work of leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who joined the insurgency that erupted in Iraq soon after the 2003 US-led invasion.

Brutal: Other captives are shot before being tied to makeshift crucifixes

A crowd of local men watch from behind a low fence, some of them are taking photos or filming the executions with their mobile phones

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