The Takfiri group, ISIL, executed three people in Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra by binding them to three historic columns and blowing them up

The Takfiri group, ISIL (so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Levantt), executed three people in Syria's ancient city of Palmyra by binding them to three historic columns and blowing them up, a monitoring group said Monday.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said ISIL on Sunday "tied three individuals it had arrested from Palmyra and its outskirts to the columns... and executed them by blowing up" three columns.

Khaled al-Homsi, an activist from Palmyra, said ISIL had yet to inform local residents who the executed individuals were or why they had been killed.

"There was no one there to see (the execution). The columns were destroyed and ISIL has prevented anyone from heading to the site," Homsi, who works with the local Palmyra Coordination Committee activist group, told AFP.

Mohammad al-Ayed, also an activist from Palmyra, said the columns were "archeological, and there are many like them still present in Palmyra."

"ISIL is doing this for the media attention, so that ISIL can say that it is the most villainous, and so it can get people's attention," al-Ayed told AFP.

The terrorist group has captured swathes of territory across Iraq and Syria to create a self-styled "caliphate" where it enforces a Takfiri ideology.

Since the Takfiris seized Palmyra from regime forces in May, they have destroyed multiple sites and historic artifacts, including its celebrated temples of Bel and Baal Shamin as well as several funerary towers.