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Islamic State executes Ethiopian Christians in newly released video

In February the group released a similar video in which several Coptic Christians from Egypt were beheaded.

By Fred Lambert

DERNA, Libya, April 19 (UPI) -- The Islamic State released a video Sunday depicting the execution of several Ethiopian Christians in Libya, according to reports.

The 29-minute video -- which bears the logo of IS and has not been independently verified -- features a masked, armed militant warning Christians to convert to Islam or pay a tax.

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Two groups of up to 30 Ethiopian Christians, believed to have been members of the Ethiopian Church, are separately killed. One group is shot in the head in the desert and the other beheaded on a beach.

In February a similar video by the group showed militants decapitate 21 Coptic Christians from Egypt.

After originally forming in April 2014, an Islamic extremist group known as Majlis Shura Shabab al-Islam, or "The Islamic Youth Shura Council," declared allegiance to IS and seized the city of Derna on Libya's northeastern Mediterranean coast last November.

The group proclaimed it was now a part of the IS caliphate, while IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced the expansion of IS to cells in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Libya and Algeria.

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Since then the group's Libyan chapter has claimed credit for a series of publicized executions and attacks, including against the Algerian embassy in January, the Iranian embassy in February and the South Korean embassy earlier this month, though each Tripoli-based building had been abandoned at the time.

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