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At Least 25 Killed in Northern Syria


Opposition activists say Islamist militants and their local supporters have killed at least 25 people in a village in northern Syria near the Turkish border.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told VOA that militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) killed 14 fighters from rival rebel groups, at least nine local tribesmen and two children.

The Observatory said at least nine other villagers were missing and suspected to have been killed.

The reported killings took place Tuesday in Shuyukh, 100 kilometers northeast of Aleppo.

The Britain-based watchdog, which has a network of sources across Syria, cited local residents as saying the men had been executed by gunfire and knives.

Media activists circulated online a list of people they said were victims. They said four bodies had been thrown into the Euphrates River.

Reuters quoted an opposition activist who runs a Facebook page for the Jarablus area, which includes Shuyukh, as saying that "residents of Shuyukh betrayed the mujahideen. Then ISIL stormed into the area."

The activist said ISIL, an al-Qaida breakaway group, had participated in the attack, but that local men had led it.

The fighters in the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are mostly foreigners who went to Syria to join the armed insurgency against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The civil war in Syria is entering its fourth year.
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