Several pro-jihadist Twitter accounts on Saturday published gruesome pictures apparently showing Islamic State militants beheading another Lebanese army soldier, around ten days after the same group executed captive army sergeant Ali al-Sayyed.

 

“We executed another army soldier, Abbas Medlej, after he tried to escape,” Turkey’s Anatolia news agency quoted an unnamed IS leader as saying. The so-called Qalamun branch of the Islamic State also published a statement confirming the execution of Medlej. “Today, Lebanese soldier Abbas Medlej tried to escape from his prison in a malicious manner,” the group said in a statement circulated on social media websites. “After he tried to open fire at … the Islamic State’s soldiers, we managed with God’s help to control the situation and beheading was the fate of this Rafidi (derogatory term for Shiites),” the group added. Meanwhile, pictures posted on social media showed a masked gunman cutting off Medlej’s head and a number of jihadists surrounding the decapitated body. [Link]