Militants fighting for the Islamic State in northern Syria have carried out another mass cigarette burning, as the terror group steps up its anti-smoking campaign.

Photographs taken in the northern town of Barqah, close to the border with Turkey, show members of ISIS' feared religious police force setting light to vast piles of cigarettes in a field.

The images emerged as it was revealed ISIS has erected shocking anti-smoking posters throughout its self-declared caliphate featuring images of burning human lungs, in the hope it will convince militants to reject the 'slow suicide' caused by cigarettes.

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Up in smoke: Photographs taken in the northern town of Barqah, close to the border with Turkey, show members of ISIS' feared religious police force setting light to vast piles of cigarettes in a field.

Flames: Petrol is seen being poured over the boxes of cigarettes, which are then set alight

Shocking: The cigarette burning images emerged as it was revealed ISIS has erected shocking anti-smoking posters throughout its self-declared caliphate featuring images of burning human lungs

Images of the mass cigarette burning have been widely shared by ISIS supporters on social media.

The terror group has ruled that smoking cigarettes causes cancer and is therefore a form of suicide. Taking your own life is deemed a major sin by ISIS and failed attempts - or in the case of cigarettes 'slow' attempts - are considered comparable with murder.

Despite this many fighters continue to regularly smoke and abandoned ISIS positions are often found littered with cigarette butts - suggesting a thriving black market exists in the vast swathes of Syria and Iraq under the militants' control.

To counter this, ISIS appears to now be relying less on threats and punishments to convince militants to give up smoking, and more on using similar shocking images of cancer victims that now appear on packets of cigarettes in the West.

In typical ISIS fashion, however, the terror group took the method to its logical extreme, showing grisly images of lungs being set alight to symbolise the damage smoking does to a human body.

Getting ready: The photographs of the cigarette burning in northern Syria show members of ISIS' notorious Hisbah religious police force using huge planks of wood to prepare a bonfire

Images of the mass cigarette burning have been widely shared by ISIS supporters on social media

The photographs of the cigarette burning in northern Syria show members of ISIS' notorious Hisbah religious police force using huge planks of wood to prepare a bonfire in a stretch of barren countryside outside the town of Barqah.

Several lorries are seen arriving at the site and countless cartons of cigarettes are unloaded - the cargo presumably having been confiscated from local black market salesmen.

Petrol is then seen being poured over the boxes of cigarettes, which are then set alight and burst into flames while the chilling black banner of the Islamic State flutters in the wind nearby.

Once the fires have been extinguished, the landscape is seen littered with vast piles of burnt cigarette packets.

Delivery: Several lorries are seen arriving at the site and countless cartons of cigarettes are unloaded - the cargo presumably having been confiscated from local black market salesmen

Remains: Once the fires have been extinguished, the landscape is seen littered with vast piles of burnt cigarette packets

Last November it was revealed that a French jihadist fled ISIS after just two weeks when he decided he would rather face jail in his home country than put up with the terror group's strict ban on smoking.

Flavien Moreau, 27 was the first French citizen to be tried for joining ISIS and was sentenced to seven years jail by a court in Paris.

Moreau, who has 13 previous convictions ranging from armed robbery to assault, is a Muslim convert. He moved to Syria in 2012 to join ISIS after becoming radicalised in France.

But he returned to France just two weeks later, unable to cope with the strict ISIS regime, and was swiftly arrested.

Moreau told the court: 'I really struggled with not smoking... It was forbidden by the katiba. I had brought Nicorette gum with me, but it wasn't enough. I left my gun with my emir and I left.'