Baghdad: Islamic State group militants searched through the Syrian town of Palmyra for government troops and fighters, using lists of names and informers to track them down and shooting some in the head on the spot, activists said on Friday, estimating at least 150 have been killed in the past two days.
The purge was part of a clampdown by the extremist group to solidify its grip on the town since overrunning it late Wednesday. The militants have also imposed a curfew from 5 p.M. Until sunrise and banned people from leaving town until Saturday morning to ensure none of the government figures they seek manage to escape, activists and officials said.
The door-to-door hunt for opponents was similar to a purge the militants carried out in the Iraqi city of Ramadi after capturing it last week.
"The search is going from house to house, shop to shop and people on the streets have to show identity cards," said Osama al-Khatib, an activist from Palmyra who is currently in Turkey. Al-Khatib last contacted his friends and relatives in Palmyra on Friday morning before the government cut off all land and cellular telephones as well as Internet service in the town.
IS fighters have also detained dozens of suspects after seizing Palmyra, which is home to one of the Middle East's most famous archaeological sites, activists and officials said.
Homs-based activist Bebars al-Talawy and an opposition Facebook page said that as many as 280 soldiers and pro-government militiamen have been killed in Palmyra since it was captured Wednesday.
Al-Talawy said militants abducted soldiers and pro-government gunmen from homes, shops and other places where they had sought to hide. He added that many were shot dead in the streets.
He said IS fighters used loudspeakers to warn residents against sheltering troops, leading many to come forward to give information about forces that had melted into the civilian population.
Al-Khatib said some 150 bodies lay in the streets of Palmyra, including 25 members of the pro-government militia known as the Popular Committees who were Palmyra residents.
Maamoun Abdulkarim, the head of the Antiquities and Museum Department in the Syrian capital Damascus, said "there are arrests and liquidations in Palmyra." He added that IS fighters are "moving in residential areas, terrifying people and taking revenge."
