A video purporting to show Isis militants murdering hundreds of Syrian children was allegedly filmed more than a year ago as propaganda for the terror organisation, an expert has claimed.
The clip was seemingly filmed after the Islamic terror organisation seized a Syrian government airbase, Tabqa, outside Raqqa in Syria, in August last year and apparently shows the execution of 250 Syrian soldiers, not children.
Charlie Winter, a senior researcher at the Quilliam Foundation, told The Independent the clip “definitely, definitely” did not show children being executed and labeled some reporting of the video as “incredibly irresponsible.”
“In a conflict like this where we need complete clarity, not putting this video in the correct context can be incredibly harmful,” Mr Winter said.
“There is an obvious line between responsible reporting and providing the relevant context and not making it accessible, it just is completely ludicrous to me that this kind of reporting is still going on.”
In the original footage, which is too graphic to be shown online, scores of people are seen bound and lying face-down on the ground in a line.
A masked militant, holding what appears to be an automatic assault weapon, walks along the line and can be seen to shoot at least four individuals. Other masked men in the video also open fire at the bound people on the ground, causing dust to obscure the footage.
Mr Winter, who has watched both the newer version and the original of the same scene, claims the video was “filmed by an Islamic state fighter” as part of their extensive propaganda.
“This stuff is made to intimidate audiences,” he said. “It is made to scare the people that IS [Isis] is trying to scare.”
