The News Minute | July 6, 2014 | 10:58 pm IST
Damascus: The militant group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has rousted as many as 30,000 people from an eastern Syrian town after capturing it, a human rights body said on Sunday.
The people were forced out of their homes over the weekend and sought refuge in nearby areas in Deir al-Zour province, Xinhua reported citing the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Shahel, a town in eastern countryside of Syria's oil-rich in the province, was a stronghold of the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, which has been deadlocked in battles against the ISIS, an Al Qaeda-splinter group.
The Nusra Front withdrew from Shahel after many rebel groups there pledged alliance to the ISIS.
Meanwhile, almost all of the oil fields in the province have fallen in the hands of the ISIS.
The ISIS has recently proclaimed the establishment of an "Islamic Caliphate" straddling Syria and Iraq, and changed its name into the "Islamic State".
With IANS