Islamic State fighters have abducted at least 400 civilians in eastern Syria after an attack by the terrorist militia in which at least 135 people were killed, a monitoring group says.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday said the jihadists had moved the seized people from a regime-held village of al-Baghaliyeh, outside of Deir al-Zour city, following a major assault on Saturday.
The attack resulted in the militants' capture of the village, said the watchdog, which relies on a network of activists inside war-torn Syria.
"We fear that the 400 will be executed or enslaved by the organisation on the pretext that they are loyal to the regime," the Observatory head, Rami Abdel-Rahman, told the news agency dpa.
He added that the abducted people were mostly families of paramilitaries loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The abductees have been taken to Islamic State-controlled areas in Deir al-Zour and the province of al-Raqqa in north-eastern Syria.
The Syrian government has dispatched military reinforcements in an attempt to regain control of al-Baghaliya from hardliners, activists said.
The Britain-based Observatory reported late on Saturday that Islamic State had launched an attack on al-Baghaliyeh, where it killed at least 85 civilians as well as 50 Syrian soldiers and allied paramilitaries.
Syria's state news agency SANA put the death toll at 300, saying all of them were civilians.
Islamic State controls most of the Deir al-Zour province and its capital city of the same name.
The al-Qaeda breakaway group has been besieging regime-held areas in the Deir al-Zour city for more than a year.
