ISIS ‘burns halal U.S. chickens’ intended as aid for Syrians

ISIS released this week pictures alleging to show boxes of halal chicken intended for civilians being burned.

According to The Independent, the militants set fire to the food aid because the birds had been killed in the U.S.

“Two trucks transporting boxes of food aid were apparently stopped at a checkpoint in Aleppo province in an area under the militant group’s control on Wednesday,” the newspaper reported.

“Images from a propaganda account affiliated with ISIS show militants emptying the trucks, which were filled with chicken legs, fruit and vegetables, and dumping them at the bottom of a hill in the Akhtarin countryside, in north Aleppo,” the report added.

The boxes of chicken were labeled “Koch Foods,” a U.S.-based chicken company.

When asked why they burned the chicken, Abu Mohammed Hussam, reportedly an activist with the Syrian group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, told The Independent: “ISIS said that the chicken is not slaughtered the Islamic way. The chicken was supposed to be going to civillians.”

In February, photographs posted on ISIS-affiliated websites showed the militant group handing out food from aid packages that seem to bear the United Nation’s World Food Program (WFP) logo.

The boxes appeared to have been labeled with the ISIS infamous insignia, news website Vocativ reported adding that parts of the WFP logo were still visible.

In posts on channels supportive of the group, the aid is described as “zakat,” or almsgiving to the poor.

The United Nations food agency expressed alarm over the images circulating on social media.

“WFP condemns this manipulation of desperately needed food aid inside Syria,” Muhannad Hadi, the agency’s emergency coordinator for the Syrian crisis, said at the time.
According to U.N. estimates, 9.8 million people are in need of food assistance in Syria

SOURCE : english.alarabiya.net