Islamic State Publicly Beheads Two Syrian Women For 'Sorcery'

Two Syrian civilian women were publicly beheaded alongside their husbands by the Islamic State this week, according to a report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The beheadings took place in the Deir al-Zor province of Syria, and all parties having been accused of sorcery. This marks the first time ISIS has publicly executed civilian women in their grisly signature style, but it is by no means their first foray into femicide. Last month, Islamic State militants killed nearly 400 people in the Syrian city of Palmyra, most of them women and children. They’ve also been known to publicly stone men and women to death for adultery.

While the Islamic State does not yet target women for execution on the same scale as they do men, they hold female lives at an equally low (if not lower) value, systematically torturing, raping, and selling women and girls across IS territories in Syria and Iraq—many for “as little as a pack of cigarettes.”