The terrorist group ISIS released a propaganda video late yesterday depicting a British hostage as a news correspondent and declaring that a besieged Syrian town is about to fall to the brutal Islamist jihadists.
“Hello, I’m John Cantlie,” the black-dressed hostage says, “and today we are in the city of Kobani on the Syrian-Turkish border. That is, in fact, Turkey right behind me.”
Cantlie continues: “Now the battle for Kobani is coming to an end.”
In the video, Cantlie, a photojournalist captured by terrorists in November 2012, mockingly mentions the lack of Western journalists.
The fate of Kobani has become a battleground in the Western campaign against the Islamic State, the terrorist organization also called ISIS or ISIL. Over the past month, a U.S.-led coalition has barraged the town with airstrikes to disperse ISIS fighters.
ISIS previously has used on-camera beheadings of hostages and other atrocities as propaganda tools.
>>> What ISIS Is Trying to Achieve With Its Slick Videos
“Contrary to what the Western media would have you believe, it is not an all-out battle here now,” Cantlie says in the new video. “It is nearly over. As you can hear, it is very quiet, just the occasional gunfire.”
“The main propaganda point made in the video seems to be that the Islamic State has triumphed in Kobani, despite Western media reports of ongoing fighting,” James Phillips, a Middle East expert at The Heritage Foundation who follows the terrorist group, told The Daily Signal. Phillips added:
This message of an inevitable victory is an important one to send to supporters and potential recruits in Western countries. The goal is to keep the pipeline full of volunteers that the Islamic State can use as cannon fodder or suicide bombers in its bloody struggle to establish a caliphate.
On Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 800 people have been killed since the ISIS siege of Kobani began.
