A/HRC/28/69 84. On 15 September 2014, ISIS launched a multi-front attack on the Ayn Al-Arab (Kobane) region with heavy weapons, artillery, tanks, and thousands of fighters. While most residents fled or were evacuated by the YPG before ISIS advanced, some men and women who did not flee – who were too old, too infirm, disabled, or who had remained to protect their property – were executed by ISIS. Executions of civilians were documented in Pinard, Tel Sha’eer, Kortek, Qaramou, Tel Haydar, Dongez and Biliq villages in late September and October 2014. In Pinard village, one of those killed by ISIS was a mentally handicapped man. 85. ISIS executed Kurdish fighters captured during its attack. In mid-September 2014 in Tel Abyad (Ar Raqqah), ISIS executed a female Kurdish fighter before a group of detained civilians from Ayn al-Arab (Kobane). Killing of a captured soldier purchased from another armed group 86. In late June 2014, a group claiming to be the Islamic Front kidnapped a soldier at a checkpoint in Al Hasakah. They made a ransom demand to the soldier’s family but the family was not able to pay. In July the group reportedly sold the soldier to ISIS. On 16 November, ISIS released a view purporting to show the soldier’s execution. The family was able to identify the soldier in the video as being their relative. The location of the execution remains unclear. Shelling of Ayn al-Arab (Kobane) 87. In mid-September 2014, prior to and during the initial phases of ISIS’s attack on the Ayn al-Arab (Kobane) region, ISIS indiscriminately shelled towns and villages across Ayn al-Arab (Kobane), as well as the city. Multiple accounts were received of men, women and children having been killed by the shelling. In late September, a 15-year-old boy was killed by ISIS shelling of the city. On 22 and 23 September, a 55-year-old and a 60-year-old man were killed as they fled from the city towards the Turkish border. Finding 88. ISIS justifies its executions by religious law. While investigations into the operation of ISIS sharia courts are ongoing, there are reasonable grounds to believe that ISIS has committed the war crime of execution without due process. ISIS carried out public executions to instil terror among the population, ensuring submission to its authority. 89. By its public display of bodies and failure to honourably inter them in accordance with the rites of the religion of the deceased, ISIS has violated customary international humanitarian law. Displays of dead, mutilated bodies are deliberate acts intended to humiliate and degrade the victims and their family, amounting to the war crimes of outrages upon personal dignity. 90. ISIS has committed acts of violence against the civilian population under its control in Ar Raqqah and in its areas of control in Dayr az Zawr, Al Hasakah and Aleppo governorates. That is a continuation — and a geographic expansion — of the widespread and systematic attack on the civilian population identified in document A/HRC/25/65. ISIS, a structured group, directs and organizes those acts of violence against civilians, evincing an organizational policy. 91. The massacres and unlawful killings in Ar Raqqah, Dayr az Zawr, Al Hasakah and Aleppo governorates, as described above, form part of the attack. In perpetrating those killings in those governorates, ISIS has committed the crime against humanity and the war crime of murder. The war crime of murder has also been committed in relation to the massacres and other unlawful killings in Hama and Homs governorate. In deliberately attacking persons, such as journalists, the armed group has committed a war crime. 37