Syrian Islamic group shoot dead 14-year-old in front of his parents for insulting the Prophet

   Members of an Al Qaeda-linked Islamist group in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo executed a 14-year-old boy in front of his parents on Sunday as punishment for what the group regarded as a heretical comment, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Mohammad Qataa was shot in the face and neck a day after being seized, said the pro-opposition monitoring group, which is based in Britain and uses a network of observers across Syria.

   The Observatory cannot ignore these crimes, which only serve the enemies of the revolution and the enemies of humanity,' said the group's leader Rami Abdulrahman.

A picture taken from a video uploaded on YouTube by the Aleppo Media Centre allegedly shows 14-year-old Mohammad Qataa (right) who was killed by insurgents for apparently insulting the Prophet Mohammad

An image grab taken from Syria's official television channel al-Ikhbariya reportedly shows the body of 14-year old Mohammad after he was shot dead

   A photo released by the Observatory showed Qataa's face with his mouth and jaw bloodied and destroyed as well as a bullet wound in his neck.

Britain and France worked together last month to lift a European Union embargo on arms shipments to Syrian rebels, giving them the flexibility to send weapons to forces against President Bashar Assad.

Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Sunday that no such decision had yet been taken and promised for the first time to give lawmakers a vote in parliament if and when it was.

 

   But Prime Minister David Cameron's government is split on the issue, with some ministers fearing such a move could worsen the bloodshed and drag Britain into a protracted conflict.

It also raises concerns that weapons could be used by Islamist extremists to commit atrocities like this most recent execution.

The Observatory, which based its report on witness accounts of the killing, said Qataa, who was a street vendor selling coffee in the working-class Shaar neighbourhood, had been arguing with someone when he was overheard saying: 'Even if the Prophet Mohammad comes down (from heaven), I will not become a believer.'

This picture from a video released by the Aleppo Media Centre reportedly shows Mohammad's parents who watched as their son was shot dead in the street by an Al Qaeda-linked group

Qataa's parents said the youth had taken part in pro-democracy demonstrations in Aleppo

The gunmen belonged to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a militant group that started off known as the Al-Nusra Front (file picture)

The gunmen, who belong to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a militant group that started off known as the Nusra Front, took Qatta on Saturday and brought him back alive in the early hours of Sunday to his wooden stand, with whiplash marks visible on his body.

People gathered around him and a member of the fighting brigade said: 'Generous citizens of Aleppo, disbelieving in God is polytheism and cursing the prophet is a polytheism. Whoever curses even once will be punished like this.'

'He then fired two bullets from an automatic rifle in view of the crowd and in front of the boy's mother and father, and got into a car and left,' the report said.

Abdulrahman said the boy's mother had pleaded with the killers, whose Arabic suggested they might not be Syrian, not to shoot her son. 

Qataa's parents said the youth had taken part in pro-democracy demonstrations in Aleppo.

Since last year, large parts of the city have fallen under the control of Islamist brigades, including the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, as well as other rebel units.