The self-proclaimed Islamic State militants have executed at least 400 innocent people in Palmyra since capturing the ancient Syrian city four days ago, Syrian state media said on Sunday.
It was not immediately possible to verify the account, but it was consistent with reports by activists that the Islamist fighters had carried out executions since capturing the city from government troops.
The militants seized the city of 50,000 people, site of some of the world's most extensive and best preserved ancient Roman ruins, on Wednesday, days after also capturing the most area of the city of Ramadi in neighboring Iraq.
The so-called Muslim militants have proclaimed a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from territory they hold in both Syria and Iraq. They have a history of carrying out mass killings in towns and cities they capture, and of destroying ancient monuments which they consider evidence of paganism.
"The terrorists have killed more than 400 people.. and mutilated their bodies, under the pretext that they cooperated with the government and did not follow orders," Syria's state news agency said, citing residents inside the city.
It added that dozens of those killed were state employees, including the head of nursing department at the hospital and all her family members.
the so-called Islamic State supporters have posted videos on the Internet they say show fighters going room to room in government buildings searching for government troops and pulling down pictures of President Bashar al-Assad and his father.
Activists have said on social media that hundreds of bodies, believed to be government loyalists, were in the streets.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors violence in the country with a network of sources on the ground, says that some people were beheaded in the town since it fell but has not given an estimate for the toll among civilians.
It says at least 300 soldiers were killed in the days of fighting before the city was captured.
"A bigger number of troops have disappeared and it is not clear where they are," Rami Abdulrahman from the Observatory told Reuters.
TROOPS EVACUATE HOSPITAL
Dozens of Syrian troops evacuated a strategically-located position inside a hospital in Idlib province in the northwest of the country last week, where they had held out since April under siege.
Syrian state television said on Sunday its air force had killed 300 insurgents in strikes that broke the siege of the Jisr al-Shughour hospital. The al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, an insurgent group involved in the offensive in the area, said the government forces had fled.
State television aired footage on Sunday showing wounded soldiers arriving at another hospital in the nearby coastal area, stronghold of Assad's supporters.
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