Thief is made to pay the ultimate price for his crime in Raqqa

The photos, which all have identical captions in Arabic, say that it shows the 'implementation of the punishment of a thief from Raqqa city'.

Surrounded by up to 50 men and boys and held in place by two ISIS enforcers, the man is forced to his knees as his right hand, wrapped in white bandages, is placed on a wooden desk before it is cut off and put into a white plastic bag.

It is less than a week since ISIS militants carried out a similar punishment on a man in Mosul, Iraq.

Cutting off the right hand as a punishment for theft is a strict interpretation of Sharia law, carried out by the so-called Islamic State, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

It comes as US Defense Secretary Ash Carter has predicted that recent US-led efforts to accelerate the fight against ISIS would produce 'tangible gains' in Iraq and Syria by March, even as he urged coalition partners to expand and deepen their military contributions.

Carter expected that defense ministers from more than two dozen countries would endorse a new U.S. plan for taking on IS. The ministers planned a joint statement after their meeting at NATO headquarters.

In public remarks at the start of the session, Carter cast the talks as an historic effort to hasten the demise of IS, which has proved resilient in Iraq and Syria and is spreading to Afghanistan, Libya and elsewhere in the greater Middle East. 

Carter said coalition military chiefs, including U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, would meet soon to discuss and evaluate the campaign, and that in mid-March the U.S. Central Command headquarters in Florida would convene a military conference to assess progress.

'By then, at the latest, we should begin to see tangible gains from those additional capabilities, from the ones the coalition is already bringing to bear,' Carter said.

Carter said the U.S. is determined to accelerate the war campaign and recapture as soon as possible the Islamic State group's main strongholds - Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq. 

Syrian government forces are yet to make a concerted push on Raqqa, despite making significant gains against Opposition forces in Aleppo.

President Bashar's ground forces backed by Lebanese Hezbollah militants, Iranian commanders and Afghan fighters surround Aleppo after heavy air bombardment from Syrian and Russian jets causing hundreds of thousands of Syrians to flee to the Turkish border.

Five years of civil war have pitted President Bashar Assad's government, backed by Russia and Iran, against an array of weakened opposition groups, some supported by the United States.

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