The group’s propaganda channels published video of the depraved killing which shows jihadis hurling a terrified Syrian headfirst from a building. After hitting the rubble, explosives on the man’s helmet detonate. He was killed instantly in the blast, which decapitated him. The death cult has released countless other sick murder videos, including beheadings and mass executions by firing squad.

This latest brutal killing is said to have taken place in Yarmouk camp, an ISIS-controlled area on the outskirts of Damascus. One image released by the group shows a petrified Syrian Arab Army soldier bound with cables. An ISIS militant can be seen fitting the captured man with a helmet armed with explosives. A second image, taken after the soldier has been hurled from a building, shows the captive hurtling headfirst to the ground.

In one image too gruesome to show, the man's headless body lies motionless on the ground. The execution is believed to be in retaliation for recent airstrikes by Syrian and Russian forces which targeted ISIS-held territory in and around Yarmouk camp. The area has seen heavy fighting since government forces began a campaign to retake rebel-held towns on the outskirts of the Syrian capital. Before the Syrian war broke out in 2011, Yarmouk was home to Syria's largest Palestinian refugee population.

ISIS has been driven out from its so-called "Caliphate" in Syria and Iraq. But the terror group still controls pockets of territory and seized Yarmouk during the height of its power in 2015. The UN has warned around 1,200 civilians are still trapped in the besieged camp and have no access to food or medical supplies. Pierre Krahenbuhl, commissioner-general of UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, said: "Yarmouk and its inhabitants have endured indescribable pain and suffering over years of conflict. We are deeply concerned about the fate of thousands of civilians, including Palestine refugees, after more than a week of dramatically increased violence.” </s> It is believed the inmate was killed in retaliation to a series of air strikes by Syrian and Russian air forces

Pictures released by Isis have revealed the moment that a man was turned into a human bomb by Isis militants.

In their latest execution images they tie the man to planks of wood and secure a device to his helmet.

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The pictures were taken in Yarmouk, an area controlled by Isis and not far from Damascus, and is believed to be in retaliation to airstrikes by Syrian and Russian armed forces.

He was killed instantly in the detonation which caused him to be decapitated. The footage, which we have chosen not to show, was released on Isis websites.

More than three dozen Syrians held for years by al-Qaida-linked insurgents in the country’s northwest were released on Tuesday as part of a deal to hand over areas around Damascus back to the government, state media reported.

The video and pictures show the moment that he was dropped head first to the floor

He was decapitated in the explosion when the detonator on his head went off

The state-run Al-Ikhbariya TV broadcast images of the released, including women and children, arriving by bus at a government-controlled checkpoint, kissing and hugging Syrian soldiers. Many cried as they spoke to the soldiers. The captives had been held by the insurgents since 2015.

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The 42 people freed on Tuesday are the first batch of more than 80 who are to be released.

Along with their release, the deal will see al-Qaida-linked fighters from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group evacuate from a Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus, while about 5,000 people in two northwestern villages besieged by insurgents will be allowed to move to government-held areas.

This is the latest in a series of evacuation deals for areas surrounding the capital, Damascus, that came under intense military offensive and crippling sieges. The United Nations and rights groups have criticised the deals, saying they amount to forced displacement.

But the latest deal does not restore full government control over the sprawling Yarmouk camp, where Islamic State militants control small pockets of the camp and a neighbouring quarter and are continuing to clash with Syrian troops.

The attack happened in Yarmouk, close to Damascus (Picture: Reuters)

Islamic State militants control small pockets of the camp and a neighbouring quarter and are continuing to clash with Syrian troops (Picture: Reuters)

Another deal to evacuate three other suburbs south of Damascus is expected to take place in the coming days.

Al-Ikhbariya said nearly 20 wounded or ill from the two besieged villages were evacuated Tuesday. But the evacuation of more than 1,000 residents of the villages of Foua and Kfraya has apparently stalled amid security concerns.

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The residents reportedly are demanding they all leave at once instead of in batches for security reasons, according to the TV and a Facebook page that reports on Foua and Kfraya.

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The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said five buses carrying around 200 insurgents from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham arrived at the handover area south of Aleppo after they left the Yarmouk camp.

The U.N. has warned of ‘catastrophic consequences’ of the fighting affecting remaining inhabitants of Yarmouk. The camp was established in 1957 and has since turned into a densely populated area where nearly 150,000 registered Palestinian refugees lived before Syria’s conflict in 2011.

Many cried as they spoke to the soldiers. The captives had been held by the insurgents since 2015 (Picture: Reuters)

Since the early days of the war, rebel groups seized control of the camp, and the government has fought to restore control, laying a tight siege for years.

The Islamic State militants entered the camp, located about five miles from the centre of Damascus, in 2015, seizing parts of it.

‘Yarmouk and its inhabitants have endured indescribable pain and suffering over years of conflict,’ Pierre Krähenbühl, the chief for the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency, said last week.

The latest fighting displaced around 5,000 civilians from Yarmouk into neighboring area of Yalda, the U.N. said. There are also an unconfirmed number of civilians stranded in Yarmouk. </s> Jordan hanged 15 death row prisoners including convicted “terrorists” at dawn on Saturday, its information minister said, in a further break with a moratorium on executions it observed between 2006 and 2014.

Ten of those put to death had been convicted of terrorism offences and five of “heinous” crimes including rape, Mahmud al-Momani told the official Petra news agency.

The attorney general for Amman district, Ziad al-Dmour, said the executions represented “a clear message to anyone who tries to undermines the security of the nation”.

Amnesty International, however, expressed shock at the hangings of 15 prisoners — the largest number to be put to death on a single day in Jordan.

“The horrific scale and secrecy around these executions is shocking,” said Amnesty’s deputy director at the group’s Beirut regional office, Samah Hadid.

Momani said all those executed were Jordanians and were hanged in Swaqa prison, south of the capital Amman.

Among the terrorism offences were a 2006 attack on tourists at Amman’s Roman amphitheatre that killed a Briton and a June 2016 attack on an intelligence service base north of the capital that left five agents dead.

They also included the September 2016 murder of Christian writer Nahed Hattar as he stood trial for publishing a cartoon deemed offensive to Islam.

King Abdullah II had said in 2005 that Jordan aimed to become the first Middle Eastern country to halt executions in line with most European nations.

Courts continued to hand down death sentences but they were not carried out.

However, public opinion blamed a rise in crime on the policy and in December 2014 Jordan hanged 11 men convicted of murder, drawing criticism from human rights groups.

Opinion hardened after the murder by the Islamic State (IS) group of captured Jordanian pilot Maaz al-Kassasbeh whose plane had crashed in a jihadist-held region of Syria in December 2014 while serving with a US-led coalition.

Grisly footage posted in February the following year of him being burnt alive in a cage outraged the public.

Swiftly afterwards, Jordan hanged two people convicted of terrorism offences, one of them Sajida al-Rishawi.

She had taken part in a 2005 suicide attack on luxury hotels in Amman organised by IS’s forebear, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, but her explosives failed to detonate.

According to judicial sources, 94 people remain on death row in Jordan, most of them convicted of murder or rape, following Saturday’s executions.

Dmour, the Amman attorney general, said executions were “the fate of all those who carry out criminal offences”.

But Amnesty International warned that the death penalty was not the way to improve security.

“This is a major step backwards for both Jordan and efforts to end the death penalty – a senseless and ineffective means of administering justice,” Hadid said in a statement.

“Jordan had for years been a leading example in a region where recourse to the death penalty is all too frequent… Hanging people will not improve public security,” Hadid added.

Jordan, which hosts hundreds of thousands of refugees from the conflict in Syria, carries out air strikes on IS in both Syria and Iraq as a member of the US-led coalition.

The pro-Western kingdom fears a spillover of the jihadist threat and closely monitors thousands of Jordanians suspected of being IS or Al-Qaeda sympathisers.

In June 2016, a car bomb at a crossing from Syria, claimed by IS, killed seven Jordanian security personnel. Amman has responded by sealing the border. </s> Soldiers loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad forces are deployed at al-Qadam area near Yarmouk Palestinian camp in Damascus Thomson Reuters By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian troops on Sunday tightened the noose around a major Palestinian refugee camp held by Islamic State militants in southern Damascus where hundreds of civilians face an uncertain future, state media, witnesses and residents said.

Nearly two weeks into a campaign to capture the last area near the capital outside government control that has left many parts of the once teeming Yarmouk camp in ruins, state media announced al Qadm neighborhood next to the camp was retaken.

Opposition sources said the army was now engaged in fierce fighting with militants on the outskirts of Yarmouk camp where an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 militants are now encircled.

The militants who are besieged in an ever shrinking area have repelled successive raids to enter their heavily defended stronghold.

The Yarmouk campaign is part of a wider-Russian backed offensive to regain the last pocket in opposition hands around the capital after retaking eastern Ghouta this month.

It has shown no sign of letting up since Western countries launched air strikes on April 14 to punish the government for a suspected poison gas attack.

The fate of hundreds of Palestinians, mostly sick and elderly women and children still in the camp that was once the largest in Syria is uncertain. UNRWA, the U.N body responsible for Palestinian refugees has called on warring parties to spare civilians.

"There are some families that have been buried under the rubble and no one is able to retrieve their bodies," said Abu Osama, a resident who fled the camp two days ago to nearby Yalda, joining thousands of others seeking relative safety there since the start of the latest offensive.

"The regime is just burning and destroying ... and then trying to advance on several fronts," Rami al Sayed, a former resident of Yarmouk who is now on its outskirts, said.

The camp, which has been under siege by the army since rebels captured it in 2012, was home to some 160,000 Palestinians before the Syrian conflict began in 2011, refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and their descendents.

Amaq, a news agency affiliated to Islamic State, said its fighters had repelled the latest attacks on their positions in al Qadam and Hay al Tadamon, killing at least 17 army fighters killed in sniper attacks.

The ultra-hardline Sunni militants also pushed overnight into some positions in the southern Damascus pocket where mainly mainstream rebels operating under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are in control, opposition sources said.

A deal was reached overnight under Russian auspices to evacuate those FSA rebels who are based in the towns of Yalda, Babila and Beit Sahem that adjoin Islamic State-held areas to opposition held areas in northern Syria, a rebel source said confirming leaks in state media.

Those rebels who have in the past fought both the militants and the Syrian army have also been targeted by the army in an attempt to force them to capitulate. </s> AMMAN — Fifteen men, including 10 convicted of terrorism, were executed by authorities on Saturday, official sources said.

“We have carried out the execution of 15 men who were convicted of acts of terrorism that led to the death of individuals as well as heinous murders and sexual assaults against men, women and children,” Government Spokesperson Mohammad Momani told The Jordan Times.

Momani, also minister of state for media affairs, added: “This is an attempt to bring justice to the victims of those terrorists who threatened our national security. Anyone who will dare engage in terrorist activities against Jordan will face the same destiny.”

The largest in the country’s history, Saturday’s executions were carried out after a long wait since Jordan executed two convicted Iraqi terrorists, Sajida Rishawi and Ziad Al Karboli in February 2015. The two inmates were hanged a day after the release of a video showing the killing of Jordanian pilot Muath Kasasbeh by the Daesh terror group.

Rishawi, who was 44 when she was executed, was convicted by the State Security Court in September 2006 of plotting terror attacks against three hotels in Amman in November 2005, which had left more than 60 people dead and around 90 injured.

Karboli’s death sentence was upheld by the Cassation Court in June 2008 after he was convicted of killing a Jordanian truck driver in Iraq in September 2005, possessing explosives as well as belonging to an illegal organisation, called Tawhid and Jihad, an Al Qaeda-affiliated group in Iraq.

In December 2014, 11 men were executed in a move seen by many as a sign of reinstating the death penalty in the Kingdom. The capital punishment had been frozen in Jordan since March 2006.

Saturday’s executions, carried out at Swaqa Correctional and Rehabilitation Centre started at 4am and ended at 7:45am, said a senior official source, who was part of a government team attending the executions.

“The majority of the executed, clad in red uniforms, were calm, with one asking to pray before being executed and another asking his family to pay his debt,” added the source, who preferred anonymity.

The hangings were carried out without trouble, according to the source. “We did not face any issues with the convicted or the procedure itself,” he told The Jordan Times.

“The executions are carried out after the Cassation Court upholds the State Security Court’s and Criminal Court’s rulings. Afterwards, the file is sent to the Cabinet for endorsement. Finally, a Royal Decree has to be issued to approve the execution,” the source explained.

Before any execution is carried out, “the attorney general reviews the files for one last time to make sure procedures are correct, and that there has been no last minute settlement between the victims’ families and the defendant”, which automatically leads to cancelling the death punishment and replacing it with a prison term.

Asked by The Jordan Times if more executions were scheduled, Momani declined to comment but stated that “justice will eventually prevail on those who commit murders and terrorist acts”.

Less than 100 people, including around 10 women, are currently on death row in Jordan, according to the minister.

The issue of capital punishment has drawn a heated debate in Jordan between activists who oppose the death penalty, and officials and lawyers who believe it should stay, supported by a broad section of the public opinion.

Saturday’s executions were met with strong objection and dismay by international organisations.

Human rights group Amnesty International described the executions in a statement as “horrific and shocking”.

“The horrific scale of these executions and secrecy around them are shocking,” said Samah Hadid, deputy director at Amnesty’s Beirut regional office.

“This is a major step backwards for both Jordan and efforts to end the death penalty — a senseless and ineffective way of administering justice. Jordan had for years been a leading example in a region where recourse to the death penalty is all too frequent,” the Amnesty statement said.

“There is no evidence that the death penalty addresses violent crimes, including terrorist-related acts. Hanging people will not improve public security,” the statement added.

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty at all times and regardless of who is accused, the nature of the crime, guilt or innocence or the method of execution, the statement said.

Meanwhile, many Jordanians hailed the executions on social media.

Munir Issa commented on Facebook following the execution, saying it was “well-deserved”.

Dua Hanafieh also praised the executions on Facebook, saying it was the right thing to do for anyone who would kill a man, woman or a child and “threaten the safety and security of our society”. </s> BEIRUT, LEBANON (3:20 A.M.) – An agreement was put in place in southern Damascus, tonight, after the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) agreed to surrender their last positions in the Yarmouk Camp and Hajar Al-Aswad.

According to a military source in Damascus, dozens of buses started entering the Yarmouk Camp and Hajar Al-Aswad to transport the Islamic State terrorists to the Badiya region in eastern Syria.

ISIS was forced to surrender these districts in southern Damascus after losing a large chunk of their territory to the Syrian Army this month.

With the Islamic State’s future departure, the city of Damascus will be free of any militant groups for the first time in seven years. </s> Syrians gather next to a burnt bus hit in shelling, allegedly by Islamic State fighters, in Damascus (Photo | AP)

BEIRUT: A bomb blast and shells fired by insurgents on the center of Damascus today killed four people and wounded 24, Syria's state media said.

State media initially said three shells hit the city center, and only reported the separate explosion later in the day.

State news agency SANA said three shells struck a tall building known as the Damascus Tower and a nearby area, and that there was an explosion in Maysat Square.

State TV showed a charred minibus as well as damaged cars in the area where the bombing occurred.

It was not immediately clear what kind of bomb was used.

The shells were apparently fired by Islamic State group fighters in the southern part of the city, where the extremists have been battling government forces for more than two weeks.

Syrian troops are advancing in the southern neighbourhood of Hajar al-Aswad and the nearby Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk.

Last week, government forces were able to separate IS fighters in Hajar al-Aswad from those in Yarmouk, a built-up residential area once home to tens of thousands of Syrians and Palestinians.

The capture of Yarmouk, Hajar al-Aswad and other areas would bring all of Damascus under government control. </s> The prisoners, all Jordanian, were hanged at the Suaga prison near the country's capital, Amman. Jordan lifted a 2006 moratorium on the death penalty in 2014.

A government spokesman said those executed for terrorism offences had been involved in five incidents: the 2003 bombing attack on the country's embassy in Iraq, the 2006 shooting of writer and political activist Nahed Hattar in Amman, the 2006 shooting attack on tourists in Amman that killed a British man, a 2016 attack on security forces in Irbid city, and an attack on intelligence officers in the Baqaa refugee camp in the same year, according to the Petra news agency.

The five not involved in terrorism had been convicted of sexual assaults.

Jordan's King Abdullah II told a UN Security Council Summit in September 2014 that the world must enact a "zero-tolerance policy" on any country, individual or organization found to facilitate, support or foster terrorist groups.

A year ago, Daesh released a video of militants burning alive a Jordanian pilot who had been captured after his plane went down in Syria during a strike against the group. Jordan executed two Al Qaeda prisoners shortly after the video was released.

Samah Hadid, deputy director of Amnesty International's Beirut regional office, called "the horrific scale and secrecy" around the most recent executions "shocking" in a statement on the executions.

"This is a major step backwards for both Jordan and efforts to end the death penalty — a senseless and ineffective means of administering justice. Jordan had for years been a leading example in a region where recourse to the death penalty is all too frequent. There is no evidence that the death penalty address violent crime, including terrorist-related acts. Hanging people will not improve public security."

Jordan has long been accused of looking the other way when confronted with accusations of torture by its security and police services. </s> Islamic State militants put at least 12 people to death in execution-style killings in the ancient city of Palmyra, which they re-captured from the government for a second time in December, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Thursday.

The jihadist group beheaded four of the people - state employees and teachers - outside a museum, the group said. The eight others - four of them government soldiers and four of them rebel fighters captured elsewhere in Syria - were shot.

Some of the killings took place at an ancient Roman theatre in Palmyra, where Islamic State last year put at least 25 government fighters to death, the Observatory said.

Islamic State captured Palmyra for a second time from the government in December. Government forces and their militia allies, backed by Russian air power, took the city back from Islamic State in March, after first losing it in 2015.
ISIL releases an execution video showing a prisoner being killed by explosives in Yarmouk Camp, Damascus.