Al-Qaeda rebels apologise as they admit they beheaded the wrong person

Militant Islamist extremists in Syria linked to al-Qaeda have apologised after beheading the wrong person and publicly parading his head.

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a jihadist group based in Iraq and Syria triumphantly showed a decapitated head of a bearded person they described as a militia leader fighting for president Bashar al-Assad before a crowd in Aleppo.

However, after the video of the scene was posted online, the other rebels recognised the victim as Mohammed Fares who was a soldier and belonged to Ahrar al-Sham, a faction of Sunni Islamists.

After the investigations were made, Omar al-Qahtani, a spokesperson from ISIS, confirmed that the man killed is Mr Mohammed Fares and that he had been injured in a battle with Shia group at Base 80, a military zone near Aleppo.

He said: “Mr Fares has been beheaded by ISIS in a mistake and that the rebels asked for understanding and forgiveness.”

The incident comes a day after president Assad and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin had a discussion on the phone over a proposed peace conference to end Syria’s three-year long civil war that has displaced millions and killed more than 120,000 people and also to bring Damascus’ use of chemical weapons under international supervision.

In their conversation Mr Putin emphasised the efforts taken by Russia, together with the US to organise a Geneva-2 international peace conference since May and appraised Assad’s readiness to send a Syrian government delegation to the meet.

Aastha Gill