Foley to Kassig: Tracking Westerners brutally beheaded by Islamic State

The Islamic State beheaded Peter Kassig, releasing a video Sunday showing a masked militant standing over the severed head of a man it said was the former US Army Ranger-turned-aid worker, who was seized while delivering relief supplies in Syria last year.

Below is a list of executions of Westerners this year by militants or movements linked to the jihadist Islamic State group:

1. James Foley -  19 August, 2014

Islamic State posts a video of the decapitation of US freelance photojournalist James Foley, who was seized in northern Syria in November 2012. The video of Foley’s killing, which provoked worldwide revulsion, also showed a second US reporter, Steven Sotloff, being paraded by a black-clad Islamic State militant who warned that he too would be killed if US President Barack Obama does not stop air strikes on Islamic State positions in Iraq.

2. Steven Sotloff - 2 September, 2014

Islamic State says it has beheaded Sotloff, in another propaganda video showing the ghastly killing. The freelance reporter was kidnapped August 4, 2013, in Aleppo near Syria’s border with Turkey. His abduction was kept secret under a news blackout.

3. David Haines - 13 September 2014

Islamic State claimed to have beheaded British aid worker David Haines, as the US launched a vast diplomatic offensive to build an international coalition against the jihadists. Haines was seized by militants in March 2013, while working for a Paris-based non-governmental organisation.

4. Herve Gourdel: 24 September 2014

Islamic State-linked Jund al-Khilifa, or “Soldiers of the Caliphate,” claim to have beheaded the French tourist who was abducted in Algeria. The beheading was shown in a video posted online after Paris rejected an Islamic State demand to halt air strikes in Iraq.

5. Peter Kassig: 16 November 2014

The Islamic State group claimed to have executed Peter Kassig, a US aid worker kidnapped in Syria, as a warning to the United States. The same video showed the gruesome simultaneous beheadings of at least 18 men described as Syrian military personnel, the latest in a series of mass executions and other atrocities carried out by Islamic State.

With inputs from agencies