TEHRAN – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted on Friday that Western countries’ silence over the beheading of a 12 year-old boy in Syria is “deafening”.

“Apparently Western-backed terrorists beheading a 12-year innocent boy in Syria is the new normal. Western silence is deafening. Zarif said in his twitter message.

The foreign minister said this shows “hypocrisy” on the part of the West.

Nureddin al-Zenki, an opposition group which is largely based in Syria’s Aleppo province, released footage on Tuesday that shows the beheading of the 12-year-old Palestinian boy with a knife on a public road in Aleppo.

The Nour el-Din al-Zinki group, that fights the Syrian government under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army, is supported by the West.

It is shown in the footage that the brutal killers were accusing the boy of being a member of al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement; however, the Palestinian group issued a statement denied the boy was a member and indentified him as a 12-year-old Palestinian refugee.

Also Lebanon's Hezbollah issued a statement describing the beheading as a “disgusting crime” by “so-called moderate rebels backed by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.”

The Syrian government also denounced the “repulsive crime” against an innocent child in a statement to the United Nations, saying the boy was a Palestinian from the Palestinian refugee camp of Handarat on the edge of Aleppo.

Amnesty International said the video is the latest “abhorrent signal” that opposition groups are carrying out serious abuses with impunity.

“This horrific video showing the beheading of a boy suggests some members of armed groups have truly plumbed the depths of depravity. It is yet another gruesome example of the summary killing of captives, which amounts to a war crime,” said Philip Luther, Director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Program.

NA/PA