Daesh crucifies children for not fasting during Ramadan

Islamic State militants reportedly crucified two boys in Syria after accusing them of eating during Ramadan, a month-long Muslim holiday in which the faithful refrain from eating, drinking and smoking during daylight hours.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitoring group, said the boys were “crucified” on the wall of an office in the Syrian city of Mayadeen near the Iraqi border.

Village residents reported that the Islamic State jihadists “suspended from a crossbar two boys aged under 18 near the headquarters of the Hissba,” the jihadist police station, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

“The children have been suspended by ropes from a pole since noon, and they were still there in the late evening,” he added. A placard was attached to them: “They broke the fast with no religious justification.”

IT IS NOT THE FIRST TIME

Throughout the month of Ramadan, which began on Thursday, believers abstain from eating, drinking, smoking and having sex from dawn until sunset. But, according to the Muslim Council of Britain, that abstinence does not apply to children, pregnant women, the ill, elderly or people who are travelling.

It is not the first time children have been killed or crucified by Isis - in February, a UN Committee on the Rights of the Child report recorded “several cases of mass executions of boys, as well as reports of beheadings, crucifixions of children and burying children alive”.

Mayadin is one of many towns in Deir Ezzor captured by the extremist group during the Syrian civil war.

Three more “crucifixions” were reported this week in al-Kasra, another Isis-held town in the province. The Syrian Observatory reported that the men were executed before their bodies were hung up but the reason they were killed was unclear.