ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Islamic State militants released new video footage on Saturday purportedly showing a Syrian army soldier in Homs being run over by a tank and executed.
According to ISIS media, on Saturday ISIS militants detained a soldier working in Syrian air force intelligence. The soldier was identified as Fadi Amr al-Zaydan, 19, from the village of Sian in the Jableh area in northern Latakia province.
It the video, Zaydan is shown being tied down while dressed in orange. A tank then rolls in his direction and crushes him under its treads.
On Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that it had received information in September 2015 that ISIS would execute Syrian government forces by running them over with tanks, and that Zaydan’s death is the first execution of its kind carried out by ISIS in areas it controls in Syria.
Zaydan’s death follows a rescue mission on Thursday that freed 69 ISIS hostages in a joint Kurdish-American operation in Hawija, Iraq.
“During the operation, which ended at 0400 hours and took place approximately seven kilometers (4.3 miles) north of Hawija, 69 hostages were successfully rescued, six ISIS terrorists were detained and more than 20 killed,” the Kurdistan Region Security Council said in a statement.
