Fighters with the Islamic State extremist group have executed nine men, including a 15-year-old boy, accused of homosexuality - a crime punishable by death under Sharia law.
According to the DailyMail, seven of the suspects were executed in Rastan, the Homs province of central Syria, while the teenager and two other men were killed in the town of Hreitan in northern Aleppo.
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Founder and Director Rami Abdel Rahman told the news outlet that the teen was initially arrested and imprisoned when he was just 14 years old.
The men in Rastan were reportedly killed in front of a large crowd that had gathered to witness the executions, but ISIS fighters destroyed any cameras used to film the murders.
As reported by the Gospel Herald, ISIS fighters often pose as homosexuals to lure unsuspecting men into revealing their sexual identity, before arresting them and eventually killing them.
In April, the extremist group released images on ISIS-linked social media accounts which showed two gay men, allegedly ages 24 and 29, being hugged by ISIS militants before being stoned in the Syrian province of Homs.
According to the Daily Beast, the practice of luring gay men into revealing their homosexuality by having a straight man pose as gay and set up dates to coax them into being arrested and executed was a common tactic used by the Syrian government was only recently employed by ISIS.
"Homosexuality is anathema to the group and in recent weeks the jihadists have been seeking to entrap gays in sting operations," a report from March indicated. "Undercover jihadists have posed as gays themselves to catch homosexuals. Some gays have been ransomed."
In August, human rights activists told the U.N. Security Council that ISIS has killed at least 30 people accused of homosexuality over the past few months.
"At the executions, hundreds of townspeople, including children, cheered jubilantly as at a wedding," said Subhi Nahas, a gay refugee from the Syrian city of Idlib. "If a victim did not die after being hurled off a building, the townspeople stoned him to death. This was to be my fate too."
Last year, ISIS released pictures showing eight ISIS militants throwing a gay man off the top of a three-story apartment complex in Wilayat al-Furat.
Then, in January, the terrorist group released photos showing militants forcing two gay men to the top of a tower in the Iraqi city of Mosul. The two men were then pushed over the ledge and fell hundreds of feet to their death.
In February, further images emerged showing the group throwing another gay man off of a tall, uncompleted building in Raqqa, Syria. Although the man survived his fall, a crowd gathered around him to stone him to death.
In August, The UN Security Council discussed violence against homosexuals committed by the extremist group in Syria and Iraq. During the meeting, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said it is time for the spotlight to be placed on IS' treatment of gay people.
"It's about time, 70 years after the creation of the U.N., that the fate of LGBT persons who fear for their lives around the world is taking center stage," Power said. "This represents a small but historic step."
