The Huffington Post reports: As Israeli missiles lay waste to Gaza, Hamas rockets fly and innocents die in civilian planes downed in eastern Ukraine, Syria has slipped even further under the radar.

But with international attention focused elsewhere, Syria has just recorded it’s bloodiest week since the country descended into violence three years ago.

More than 1,700 people have been killed in just seven days, with fighters for the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) accused of killing hundreds of government troops in a battle for a gas field, with hundreds of civilians killed as fighting intensified across the nation. The three-year-long civil war in Syria has now killed over 170,000 and displaced nearly nine million .

In the latest round of fighting, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that 270 government soldiers and gas field employees were killed in the clashes on July 19, many of them shot through the head execution-style. [Continue reading…]