This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The Islamic State has killed eight Dutch members whom it accused of trying to desert, activists have said.

“Daesh [Isis] executed eight Dutch fighters on Friday in Maadan, Raqqa province, after accusing them of attempting desertion and mutiny,” said Abu Mohammad, a member of the citizen journalist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), via Twitter on Monday.

RBSS has been documenting the group’s abuses in its de facto capital in northern Syria since April 2014. The Twitter group said tension between 75 Dutch jihadis – some of them of Moroccan origin – and Isis intelligence operatives from Iraq hadreached a new height over the past month.

Three other Dutch jihadis were arrested by Iraqi Isis members who accused them of wanting to flee, and one of the detainees was beaten to death during the interrogation, according to RBSS.

Isis leaders in Raqqa sent a delegate to solve the dispute with the Dutch cell’s enraged members, but they murdered the intermediary in vengeance, the citizen journalist group added.

The Isis leadership in Iraq then ordered the arrest of all the members of the Dutch group and imprisoned them in Tabaqa and Maadan in Syria before killing eight of them, RBSS said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, could not confirm the report. However it said three European jihadis of North African origin were killed in what Isis calls the Wilayet al-Furat – an area stretching across the Syrian-Iraqi frontier.

According to the Dutch secret services, 200 people from the Netherlands including 50 women have joined Isis in Syria and Iraq.