BEIRUT ( Reuters)- ISIS militants shot dead around 20 men inside an ancient amphitheater in the Syrian city of Palmyra Wednesday, accusing them of being government supporters, an activist group monitoring the conflict said.
Reuters was unable to independently confirm the report from the Britain-based activist group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The hardline Sunni militants took control of the central city, also known as Tadmur, from government forces last week and have already killed at least 200 people and taken around 600 captive, according to the Observatory.
"They executed around 20 men in the Roman amphitheatre and called people to watch," said the Observatory's Rami Abdulrahman, who cited sources inside the city.
Supporters of ISIS wrote on Twitter that a number of people had been killed by the group inside the amphitheatre, which forms part of the city's 2,000-year-old ruins which are a UNESCO World Heritage site.
ISIS's takeover of Palmyra marked the first time the group had seized a Syrian city directly from government control. The other population centres it holds were mostly taken from rival insurgent groups in Syria's four-year conflict.
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