Like wounded beasts about to be cornered, the Islamic State (ISIS) militants are going on a killing spree apparently in a last-ditch fight for their very own lives—making sure the world knows this by filming the killings in its propaganda video.
Fighting losing battles in Iraq and Syria, ISIS also appears to be trying to shore up whatever little local and foreign support it can still muster.
Its latest propaganda video shows Christians being killed, children being beaten up, women being executed, men being crucified and cubs of the "caliphate" executing captives, The Christian Post reported.
Titled "Enduring Glory," the extremely graphic video appears intended to show that ISIS endures despite its battlefield defeats as well as loss of fighting men and territory.
In the latest battlefield report, joint security forces liberated 1440 kilometres of Nineveh province in Iraq, and killed more than 1,300 ISIS fighters during the ongoing military operations and air strikes in the western part of Mosul, Iraqi News reported on Tuesday.
In a press statement, Iraq's Ministry of Interior said, "Joint security forces in the southern axis of Mosul managed to kill 778 members of the ISIS, while Iraqi Army Aviation killed 375 members of the ISIS," adding that, "the international coalition air force managed to kill 149 ISIS members so far."
About 30,000 troops from a broad coalition including the Kurdish Peshmerga, the Iraqi army and special forces, Shia militias allied with Iran, U.S. warplanes and military advisers and Turkish forces are involved in the battle against 6,000 ISIS fighters in and around Mosul, according to The Christian Post.
In another sign of its weakening hold on Mosul, ISIS has suddenly ceased referring to the city as the capital of its caliphate through its news media outlets, according to Iraqi News, citing a source from the Iraqi satellite TV network, Al Sumaria.
This is meant to possibly influence public perceptions about the imminent liberation of Mosul, the news source said.
In its report, Al Sumaria said, "A sudden change occurred to ISIS mass media inside the city of Mosul through statements that the city is not the capital of the caliphate, contrary to the ideology followed by ISIS since 2014, that Mosul is the capital of its caliphate."
"The mass speech of ISIS started to focus on word taboo, saying that the fall of Mosul is not the end of the battle, by listing comparable situations in Islamic history how Muslims suffered many losses before achieving grand victories," Al Sumaria added.
