An Islamic State militant shot and killed his mother in front of a post office in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa this week after she tried to persuade him to leave the extremist group, Syrian activists there said on Friday.

The fighter, Ali Saqr (21) killed his mother in front of several hundred people for what Islamic State called apostasy, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, two groups that monitor the conflict through contacts on the ground.

The act was the latest in a chain of brutal and bizarre killings that Islamic State uses, and often widely publicises, in efforts to reduce dissent and attract recruits.

It would not be the first time Islamic State has ordained the killing of a parent of one of its members.

Detained and killed

Last year, a Lebanese man travelled to Raqqa to try to bring back his son, an Islamic State fighter, and three other children whom the son had persuaded to go there. The son reported the father, who was detained and killed, according to interviews with family members.

The events in Raqqa followed a similar trajectory. The mother there, identified by Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently as Lena al-Qasem, had urged her son to leave Islamic State and flee the city - the group’s de facto capital.

He reported her comments to Islamic State, which declared she was guilty of apostasy and ordered her killed.

The son was apparently Syrian; his mother, who was in her 40s, lived in the nearby town of Tabaqa and worked in Raqqa, according to the monitoring groups.

Islamic State, also known as Isis, split from other insurgent groups in 2013. Last year, it took over large parts of Iraq and Syria and declared a so-called caliphate to impose a harsh interpretation of Islam.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the group has ordered the killing of more than 2,000 people.

Islamic State has a wide-ranging definition of capital crimes, including homosexuality, adultery and “betraying Muslims”.

(New York Times service)