Islamic State fighters take part in a military parade along the streets of northern Raqqa province, June 30, 2014. REUTERS/Stringer

BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Islamic State militant group has killed 1,878 people in Syria during the past six months, the majority of them civilians, a British-based Syrian monitoring organization said on Sunday.

Islamic State also killed 120 of its own members, most of them foreign fighters trying to return home, in the last two months, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The militant group has taken vast parts of Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate in territory under its control in June. Since then it has fought the Syrian and Iraqi governments, other insurgents and Kurdish forces.

Rami Abdulrahman, the head of the Syrian monitoring group, told Reuters that Islamic State killed 1,175 civilians, including eight women and four children.

He said 930 of the civilians were members of the Sheitaat, a Sunni Muslim tribe from eastern Syria which fought Islamic State for control of two oilfields in August.

Reuters cannot independently verify the figures but Islamic State has publicized beheadings and stoning of many people in areas it controls in Syria and Iraq. These are for actions it sees as violating its reading of Islamic law, such as adultery, homosexuality, stealing and blasphemy.

The group, an offshoot of al Qaeda, has also released videos of executions of captured enemy fighters, activists and journalists.

It beheaded two U.S. journalists, and one American and two British aid workers this year in attempts to put pressure on a U.S.-led international coalition, which has been bombing its fighters in Syria since September.

Abdulrahman, who gathers information from all sides of the Syrian conflict, said that Islamic State had also executed 502 soldiers fighting for President Bashar al-Assad and 81 anti-Assad insurgents.

He said that 116 foreign fighters who had joined Islamic State but later wanted to return home, were executed in the Syrian provinces of Deir Al-Zor, Raqqa and Hassakeh since November. Four other Islamic State fighters were killed on other charges, Abdulrahman said.

The overwhelming number of the group's victims have been from the Syrian population.cracked down on peaceful pro-democracy protests in 2011.

(Reporting by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Clelia Oziel)

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Sunday that Turkey stands behind Palestinians in their efforts to oppose what he called Israeli attempts to "reduce the Islamic character" of Jerusalem.

Davutoglu was speaking to reporters in the central Turkish city of Konya, a day after meeting with exiled Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal.

Violent demonstrations led Israel in November to briefly restrict Muslim access to a holy site in Jerusalem that includes the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third most sacred place, and the ancient Hebrew Temple Mount, the holiest place in Judaism.

The move fueled accusations that Israel was secretly plotting to take over the site, despite Israeli denials.

"The Palestinians ... have a common stance. We back this stance against the reduction or the elimination of Jerusalem's Islamic character," Davutoglu said.

"Turkey will not accept any impositions concerning Al-Aqsa and will do whatever needs to be done internationally to protect Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque."

Turkey is a strong backer of the Palestinian cause. Relations between former allies Turkey and Israel broke down in 2010 after an Israeli naval raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla killed nine Turkish citizens. Turkey has become the strongest critic of Israeli actions in Gaza, and reconciliation efforts between the two have repeatedly failed.

Mashaal, a frequent visitor to Turkey, on Saturday accompanied Davutoglu to a regional congress of Turkey's ruling party in Konya, where he addressed delegates.

Davutoglu said Sunday that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would also visit Turkey next month.

The disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 on March 8 triggered one of modern aviation's most perplexing mysteries. Flight 370, carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, vanished without a trace, sending searchers across vast areas of the Indian Ocean. An initial multinational operation to locate the wreckage far off Australia's west coast turned up empty, without a single piece of debris found.

After a four-month hiatus, the hunt resumed Oct. 4 with new, more sophisticated equipment, including sonar, video cameras and jet fuel sensors aboard three ships that will spend up to a year in a desolate stretch of the sea, about 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) west of Australia.

The 60,000-square-kilometer (23,000-square-mile) search area lies along what is known as the "seventh arc" — a stretch of ocean where investigators believe the aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed, based largely on an analysis of transmissions between the plane and a satellite.

Officials initially ruled out terrorism, but conspiracy theories have endured. Until the wreckage is found and examined, it will be impossible to say for sure what happened to the plane.

___

MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT 17

All 298 passengers and crew aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 were killed when the Boeing 777 was shot down over rebel-held eastern Ukraine on July 17.

The plane was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when, according to Dutch air crash investigators, it was likely struck by multiple "high-energy objects" that some aviation experts say is consistent with a missile strike.

Hunks of the wreckage were transported to the Netherlands by trucks and will be reassembled in a hangar. However, international teams seeking to retrieve remains and salvage evidence have had difficulty reaching the crash site due to clashes between Ukrainian government troops and Russian-backed separatist rebels. Six victims have yet to be identified.

A high-ranking rebel officer has acknowledged that rebels shot down the plane with a ground-to-air missile after mistaking it for a Ukrainian military plane. Russian media, however, claim the plane was shot down by a Ukrainian jet.

The Dutch Safety Board's final report may rule out one or the other scenario, but it will not seek to attribute responsibility.

Dutch prosecutors, meanwhile, are coordinating an international criminal investigation into the downing, but have yet to name any suspects or say when or how charges might be brought.

___

AIR ASIA FLIGHT 8501

An Indonesia AirAsia flight with 162 people aboard, most of them Indonesians, disappeared Sunday over the Java Sea, triggering a search involving several Southeast Asian nations.

Contact with Flight 8501 was lost about 42 minutes after the single-aisle, twin-engine A320-200 jet took off from Surabaya airport in Indonesia for Singapore.

It was not immediately clear whether it had any satellite tracking devices on board.

Malaysia-based AirAsia, led by Malaysian businessman Tony Fernandes, has dominated cheap travel in the region for years. AirAsia Malaysia owns 49 percent of its subsidiary, AirAsia Indonesia. It said the plane was on the submitted flight plan route when the pilots requested deviation due to weather before communication was lost.

AirAsia, which has a presence in most of Southeast Asia and recently in India, has never lost a plane before and has a good safety track record.

Reuters Videos
American-led coalition officially ends combat mission in Afghanistan

View gallery

General John Campbell, pictured at Camp Bastion at Lashkar Gah in Helmand province on October 26, 20 …

The US commander of international forces in Afghanistan on Sunday hailed the achievements of 13 years of fighting against the Taliban, as NATO formally ended its war at a ceremony in Kabul.

"Together... we have lifted the Afghan people out of the darkness of despair and given them hope for the future," General John Campbell told assembled NATO soldiers.

"You've made Afghanistan stronger and our countries safer."

On January 1, the US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) combat mission, which has suffered 3,485 military deaths since 2001, will be replaced by a NATO "training and support" mission.

The ceremony was arranged in secret due to the threat of Taliban strikes in the Afghan capital, which has been hit by repeated suicide bombings and gun attacks over recent years.

"I hope you take great pride in the positive impact you've made and will continue to make upon the Afghan people," Campbell said in a speech released by ISAF on Twitter as live broadcasts were banned for security reasons.

"The road before us remains challenging, but we will triumph."

Sunday's ceremony completed the gradual handover of responsiblity to the 350,000-strong Afghan forces, who have been in charge of nationwide security since the middle of last year.

But recent bloodshed has undermined claims that the insurgency is weakening and has highlighted fears that Afghanistan faces spiralling violence.