Seven hundred members of a tribe in eastern Syria have been executed - most of them beheaded - by Islamic State militants over the past two weeks, reliable sources told the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Majority of the 700 victims were civilians, and males. The females were mostly abducted and are being detained inside IS camps.

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In a Reuters report, the human rights monitoring group said those executed were members of the al-Sheitaat tribe in the Deir al-Zor province of eastern Syria.

The tribe, numbering about 70,000, had battled with IS militants in July when the latter took control of two oil fields in the east.

Reuters received an independent report saying that as many as 300 members of the tribe were put to death in the town of Ghraneij alone, one of the three main towns of the al-Sheitaat tribal heartland.

Director Rami Abdelrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said those "who were executed are all al-Sheitaat."

"Some were arrested, judged and killed," Abdelrahman said.

The report about the executions could not be verified from Syrian government or rebel sources, due to precarious security conditions and communication problems in the area.

Meanwhile, the Islamic State continues its sweep of northern Iraq despite airstrikes conducted by U.S. forces on some of the militant positions.

Amnesty International reports that over the past two weeks, IS militants have abducted more than 3,000 women and girls in the rampage. Now, the victims face the prospect of being sold as sex slaves or forces into marriage. In several instances, the IS were reported to have executed all male members of small towns they overran, and took the women to Mosul and other area under their control.

More than 170,000 people have been killed in Syria's civil war, which pits overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim rebels against President Bashar al-Assad. The Islamic State appears to be the most powerful of several rebel factions battling against al-Assad's forces. 

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