In July at least eight people were injured outside a church by an IS car bomb, in an area held by the Kurdish YPG militia. On the same day in Afrin, on the border with Turkey, a bomb killed eleven civilians, including children, and injured others, some seriously. Homes were damaged in the explosion and subsequent fire. A few days earlier a retired Christian school teacher went missing from her home in a mainly-Christian village near Idlib. The next day her body was found nearby: she had been raped repeatedly, tortured, and stoned to death by Islamist militants linked to an rebel group in the area. Forensic investigation found that the barbaric ordeal had lasted for around nine hours before she finally died.