Playing house? Daesh closes playgrounds to prevent gender mixing

Daesh has closed playgrounds in a Syrian city in the province of Deir Ezzor in an attempt to keep unrelated men and women from meeting each other, AFP reported Sunday.

“Daesh has shut down playgrounds in the city of Mayadeen in the eastern Deir Ezzor province ... under the pretext that there was mixing between men and women bringing their children to play,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP.

Inside the city, Observatory sources said Daesh moral police, known as Hesbah, had patrolled through Mayadeen's playgrounds on the first day of Eid al-Adha on the lookout for anyone violating the new regulation.

They arrested several men and women “for not abiding by Islamic rules on dress,” but there were no reported arrests for being at the playgrounds.

Inside the militant group's de facto capital of Raqqa in northern Syria, three women were arrested in a playground on Sunday for “not being accompanied by men,” The Observatory told AFP.