News comes as Isis captures the Syrian city of Qaryatain, its most significant advance since the fall of Palmyra. The Isis militant group has executed 19 women in its Iraqi stronghold of Mosul for refusing to have sex with fighters, a Kurdish official has claimed.
The official said that the executions, which could not be independently verified, took place during the weekend of the 1 and 2 August. Zainab Bangura, the UN's Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sexual Violence in Conflict, told Bloomberg that girls get "peddled like barrels of petrol", and are sometimes bought so they can be sold to their families for thousands of dollars in ransom money.
Meanwhile on Thursday, Isis was reported to have seized a key town in central Syria following a period of heavy skirmishes with government forces. The densely populated town of Qaryatain represents the most significant strategic gain for the militant group since it took the historic city of Palmyra, not far to the northeast.
Lying 85km 50 miles from Homs, it gives Isis a clear route to link up areas it controls in and around Palmyra with the eastern countryside of Qalamoun in Damascus province, the Associated Press reported. News that Qaryatain had fallen came from the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which said the group took the town after three suicide bombers hit army checkpoints at the entrance the day before.
The advance came after a string of military setbacks for Isis that followed its victory in Palmyra. In June, Kurdish fighters and their local allies expelled the group from the key northern border town of Tal Abyad, cutting off one of its major supply routes.
