Islamic State: Militants kill 50 from Iraqi Anbar tribe

The people who died are believed to have been displaced from the town of Hit, seized by IS

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Islamic State militants have killed at least 50 members of a western Iraqi tribe in Anbar province, officials and tribal leaders say.

The deaths are thought to be in retaliation for the Al Bu Nimr tribe's resistance to the jihadists.

The news comes after mass graves were found containing between 80 and 220 bodies, many from the same tribe.

IS militants have killed hundreds of people in the large areas of Iraq and neighbouring Syria they control.

Meanwhile AFP news agency quoted the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights as saying that at least 100 IS fighters had been killed in three days of fighting for the strategic Syrian border town of Kobane.

On Friday some 150 Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters crossed from Turkey to join Syrian Kurds who have been defending the town against IS for six weeks.

The observatory says more than 950 people have died in the battle, more than half of them from IS.

Deliberate strategy

An official from Anbar province, Faleh al-Issawi, told the Associated Press news agency that the Sunni Muslim tribesmen and women were lined up and shot by militants on Friday in the village of Ras al-Maa, north of the provincial capital Ramadi.

He said they were displaced from the town of Hit, captured by IS last month.

Members of the Al Bu Nimr tribe - which has joined the Shia-dominated government's campaign against IS - had held out against militants in the town for weeks, but were eventually forced to withdraw.

Also on Friday, mass graves were found, said to contain victims of the IS attack on Hit.

A graphic video allegedly showing some of the victims has also emerged online.

Analysts say mass killings are a very deliberate strategy by IS to spread terror in their opponents.

One local official, Sabah Karhout, described the killings in Anbar province as a crime against humanity and called for more international support for Sunni tribes fighting the militants in Anbar.

US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said the killing of Sunni tribesmen in Iraq by Islamic State fighters was the brutal "reality of what we're dealing with" in the conflict.

IS has taken over large parts of Anbar province as it expands its territory, currently about one-third of both Iraq and Syria.