AMMAN: ISIS militants have executed more than a dozen Syrians in a 24-hour period amid a rise in hit-and-run attacks against the jihadi group in Deir al-Zor province, according to a Britain-based monitoring group.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 10 of the executions took place Thursday, and were carried out in five different parts of the province. All of the victims were shot to death and their bodies “crucified,” or put on public display for a period of three days.

Nine of the 10 men were killed for allegedly taking up arms against ISIS, while the accusation against the 10th man was unclear, it said.

A locally based group of anti-regime activists in Deir al-Zor gave a similar account of the developments, but said a total of nine had been summarily executed.

The Observatory said four other men, one a student, were executed in Deir al-Zor for alleged ties with the Syrian authorities.

He was accused of “setting up a cell to fight ISIS” by staging ambushes and detonating vehicles of fighters of the militant group, it said.

“One was arrested for smoking a cigarette. Only later did Islamic State accuse him of being an informer for the regime,” Observatory head Rami Abdel-Rahman said, using the jihadi group’s latest name. ISIS bans smoking in areas under its control in accordance with its strict interpretation of Islam.

Syria’s state news agency SANA also reported on some of the executions, saying that ISIS killed three civilians and displayed their bodies in the town of Mayadin.

Small groups of Syrians who are hunting down ISIS fighters say it is part of a guerrilla campaign that has emerged as a response to the group’s growing brutality.

The Deir al-Zor-based group named “Deir al-Zor is Being Slaughtered Silently” reported a series of hit-and-run attacks against ISIS militants in recent days, carried out by “unknown individuals.”

The group also alleged this week that ISIS militants have conducted the destruction of tombstones in graveyards in rural Deir al-Zor, based on their ultra-conservative religious beliefs.