A horrific ISIS video which purportedly shows 200 Syrian children being lined up and gunned by militants has been revealed to be a terrorist propaganda video from 2014.
The sickening mass execution video was posted online by an anti-ISIS activist based in Yemen and quickly started to draw condemnation from social media users shocked by the atrocities.
However the footage is believed to have filmed in late August 2014 and the victims are prisoners of war who were caught by ISIS.
Behind them, at least a dozen gunmen armed with assault rifles and handguns stand poised and ready to fire.
One militant then begins firing at point blank range - shooting each prisoner individually as he makes along the row of victims.
Others beside him also open fire, mostly using their machine guns, and the area is filled with dust, obscuring much of the bloodshed.
The video is believed to have been filmed close to Tabqa airbase after the strategic site was overrun by militants.
ISIS continues to control a swathe of territory, including Raqqa, the capital of the terrorists’ self-proclaimed caliphate.
ISIS is known to have carried out mass executions of prisoners in the past. In one instance, 1,700 Iraqi military cadets were slaughtered in a mass killing that lasted an entire day and night.
Grisly footage of the killings - likely to rank among the group’s worst atrocities - showed executions on an industrial scale near Tikrit in Iraq.
Young men were filmed falling from trucks and pleading for their lives before being lay down in shallow graves and sprayed with bullets.
Others were shot individually and their bodies dumped into the Tigris River, while an excavator was required to shift vast piles of bodies as the executions continued into the night.
In addition to the mass killings, the terrorists have also attempted to invent new ways in which to murder people.
Public beheadings, dismemberment, and throwing people from tall buildings are a common occurrence within ISIS territory.
Other killings are held in areas of significance. After the terrorists overran the ancient city of Palmyra, Syria, in May, they killed dozens inside its ancient Roman amphitheater.
S/SH