Islamic State have reportedly been employing “honeytraps” to coerce men into homosexuality before executing them.

Members of the terrorist group, which has published a number of graphic videos featuring the murder of supposed gay men,  holds power across parts of Iraq, Syria and Libya.

According to dissident groups working in the area, ISIS religious police have been pretending to be gay men in order to coax others out of hiding, before arresting and executing them.

A source told the Star: “They set up dates to coax them into being arrested and executed.

“Homosexuality is viewed as the most disgusting practice by the regime.

“Jihadists have been seeking to entrap gay guys in sting operations.

“Sometimes the men are lucky if they have money and can pay a ransom but often they are taken straight to their deaths.”

Men in the videos are often thrown from tall buildings and stoned to death.

In some of the clips, large crowds gather to watch the executions and pelt the men with stones.

ISIS militants recently threatened to throw homosexuals off the Leaning Tower of “Pizza”.

Members of ISIS took to Twitter to warn that they were coming to “Rome” to “use your leaning tower of pizza to throw off homosexuals”.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa – which is not spelled Pizza – is actually located in the town of Pisa, nearly 200 miles from Rome.

Like moths to a flame, a growing number of people around the world have been drawn to the terrorist organization ISIS.

The al Qaeda splinter group is trying to create an Islamic state on territory it controls in Syria and Iraq. But its reach goes much further.

This week’s attack in Texas is the latest reminder of how the group inspires an international following using a unique mix of propaganda, social media, Hollywood techniques, and branding strategies more commonly associated with the corporate world.

ISIS generates widespread revulsion for its violent beheadings and public executions, but experts say it’s highly skilled at appealing to a small niche audience.

“They’re very good at branding,” said J.M. Berger, co-author of the book “ISIS: The State of Terror.”

ISIS markets itself as a strong, defiant group that is supported by religious scripture and prophecy. Unlike other terrorist organizations, it doesn’t present itself as the underdog.

“From a marketing perspective, what they’re selling is the image of strength,” said Berger.

And clearly, strength sells.

The United Nations estimates that most of the 20,000 foreign fighters it believes have traveled to Iraq and Syria went to join ISIS, according to a report cited by AP and due for publication this month.

Those unable to emigrate are encouraged to carry out terror attacks at home.

Berger says ISIS has been particularly successful in creating a common sense of identity among its followers, similar to white supremacist and Nazi groups.

Helping to keep this “identity group” together are the thousands of pro-ISIS Twitter accounts that promote its messages and videos.

ISIS stands out for sophisticated film making that tells coherent stories and encourages viewers to connect with militants. Some ISIS videos take the form of documentaries, Berger said.

“They’ve advanced the art of storytelling,” he said.

Brand psychologist and author Jonathan Gabay says ISIS has taken terrorist videos to a whole new level when compared with the blurry edits from the post 9/11 period.

“They are using … Hollywood-esque cinematography,” he said.

Like many slick corporate communications operations, ISIS prints its slogans on promotional items such as badges, coins, signage and stationary, said William McCants, an expert on Middle East policy at the Brookings Institution.

One slogan translates to “Enduring and expanding,” said McCants. It reinforces the group’s message of strength.

Another is more nuanced, and less catchy: “A caliphate in accordance with the prophetic method.” This is aimed at promoting the group’s claim that it operates on the basis of the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, said McCants.

But it’s not just religious zealots who are drawn to ISIS.

The group has attracted a range of sympathizers, including some whose main motivation is the building of a new Islamic State, said McCants.

“People want to be part of something larger than themselves,” he said.

Anjem Choudary, a U.K.-based former member of banned Islamist group Al Muhajiroun, said he’s impressed with ISIS’ ability to promote itself around the globe.

“I think they’ve been enormously successful. There’s no one in the world who hasn’t heard of the Islamic State,” he told CNNMoney.

Choudary has publicly demonstrated his support for ISIS ideology on several occasions, but is not a member of the group.

ISIS terrorists are expertly using hip hop music, video games and even children to successfully recruit young people to their violent cause. That assessment comes today from the FBI and from top U.S. counterterrorism officials, who say the ISIS social media machine is sophisticated, prolific, and unprecedented.

“They are shooting out into the ether-sphere thousands and thousands of messages a day, over 90,000 a day and it’s to millions of people across the globe,” John Carlin, the head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division told ABC News Correspondent Pierre Thomas. “What they are trying to do is to convince young people to go slaughter civilians in a vicious war.”

The online messaging is slick — far broader and more subtle than the vicious beheading videos the public is too familiar with, according to Scott Talan, a social media and marketing professor at American University. Talan viewed about a dozen ISIS propaganda videos with ABC News’ Pierre Thomas, and said he is shocked by the quality of the messaging the terror group is putting out.

“This is sophisticated. It is Madison Avenue meets documentary film making meets news channel with sensibilities and marketing value,” Talan said.

In one video, ISIS produces its own, twisted version of the popular “Grand Theft Auto” video game. While ISIS fighters gun down victims on the screen, the message flashes, “Your games — We do the same actions on the battlefield.”

“So it’s the reverse of our culture, where we say ‘escape real life and play a game.’ They’re saying, ‘escape your life, come play a real game with real consequences,'” Talan said. “They are using products from American culture — video games — for their purposes, and taking and making a message that works for them.”

And of course Westerners going to fight against ISIS have learned the hard way that the consequences are very real. Many, including a few Americans, have been killed in action. Others have been turned into propaganda mouthpieces for ISIS, or forced into barbaric acts of violence, according to the Justice Department.

Talan said many of the ISIS messages are designed to appeal to young people who are craving acceptance. For example, he said, one hip hop music video pushed out by the terror group uses a doctored “Uncle Sam” poster to say “We want you.”

“For people on the edge, this could have a lot of resonance,” Talan said. “You’re speaking to them in a language they understand … video, imagery and music. Then this message comes in about ‘We want you.’ People do want to belong to tribes. This is saying, ‘join our tribe.'”

Talan noted that some of the ISIS videos make direct appeals to women to come to the “Caliphate.” In one, a male fighter says, in English, “Sisters, we have houses, we have security … come.”

But once there, life is unspeakably brutal for women, Assistant Attorney General John Carlin said, noting they are routinely forced into marriage or enslaved — and there is no coming home again.

“They are literally selling women and children into slavery, they are slaughtering innocent civilians,” Carlin said. “And once you are over there — for those who want to leave once they realize the dark reality of what’s taking place — they kill those who want to leave out of the group.”

Another Western advertising ploy that ISIS has adopted is the use — or perhaps the abuse — of children, Talan noted.

In one ISIS video posted on Twitter, soldiers hand out ice cream to a group of excited kids. A few scenes later, you see some of the young boys grabbing AK-47’s, waving them above their heads, and chanting ISIS slogans.

“It is disturbing, but there’s a reason children are used.” Talan said. “Madison Avenue uses it all the time. … It touches empathy. It gets people to say, ‘Aww.” It puts your defenses down — it makes you want to pay attention and feel human.”

But for the children of ISIS, the Justice Department’s John Carlin said, life is a grim series of bearing witness to barbaric atrocities and slaughter, and very often, the loss of family members and loved ones to the continuing violence.

But what’s frightening, Carlin said, is that despite ISIS’ well-documented brutality, its social media campaign seems to be working right here in the United States. New recruits inspired by ISIS messaging are being discovered in the U.S. with increasing frequency — at least 55 in the past two years, according to the Department of Justice. And Carlin said in most of these cases there is a common thread.

“In almost every one of these cases, we’ve seen social media involved.” he told Pierre Thomas. “Before the advent of social media … how would you reach into the basements and bedrooms of American homes?”

Counterterrorism officials acknowledge privately that the U.S. government is struggling to meet this new threat. But Carlin said he feels confident that ultimately, ISIS and its slick propaganda machine will be exposed by the ugly reality on the ground.

“Because when people know what this group is about and what this group is really doing — killing, enslaving, raping and stealing — they are not going to want to join.”

A jihadi group that recently emerged in the Gaza Strip claimed Friday a mortar attack on a base belonging to the Islamist Hamas movement in charge of the blockaded territory.

In a statement posted online, the group calling itself Supporters of ISIS in Jerusalem said it fired mortar rounds at a base used by Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.

Witnesses told AFP they heard explosions close to Khan Yunis.

A bomb attack this week targeted Hamas’s security headquarters in Gaza after radical Islamists issued a threatening message calling for the release of prisoners.

Hamas security forces arrested a Salafist leader last month, alleging that he was a supporter of ISIS, which holds vast swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq.

Gazan jihadis have pledged allegiance to ISIS in the past, but there has been no confirmation from the group itself that it has a presence in the coastal enclave.

The IDF held a series of intensive drills around the country in the past week, part of a directive issued by recently appointed Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, who placed war training back at the top of the military’s priorities.

One of the exercises took place in the Jordan Valley, where the Artillery Corps 282 Support Unit spent five days training for war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Although the unit of conscripts holds this type of drill annually, this year was different due to the scope and variety of live fire employed, according to a senior Artillery Corps officer who spoke to The Jerusalem Post.

“What is special in our unit is its fusion of a variety of surface- based firepower,” he said. The unit can deploy cannons to strike ground targets, precision- guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, and the Spike [Tamuz] electro-optical fireand- forget missile.

It can also employ a radar battalion that can look far beyond the immediate battle zone, to locate enemies, provide early warning of incoming fire, and pass on target coordinates for return fire in seconds.

All of this activity simulated a full-scale war in southern Lebanon, the source said. Until last week, “my battalions were in Judea and Samaria, doing daily security missions. On Saturday night, they switched to a livefire drill,” he said. Usually, a full-scale drill of this kind comes at the end of a gradually escalating exercise, involving more and more military units. This time around, the source said, the Artillery Corps flipped things around, and started with the biggest drill.

“Together with the Armored Corps’ 7 Brigade, we held two-division exercises. We want to create the most realistic simulation, so this had to involve live fire,” he said. The unit moved from Ma’aleh Efraim to Beit She’an, activating the full range of its fire power – the first time this has happened in a drill, the source said.

“Our vision is to be the main ground-based firepower effort. Anyone who wants our support – infantry or armored units – has to know how to talk to us very quickly. We have the Digital Ground Army [command and control network] for that. All of the ground forces operate under one network,” he said.

This means that a tank or an infantry unit can ask for and receive precise firepower in very little time.

“If they want to hit a person in a window, they can ask for a Tamuz missile strike. If they want to hit the house, the rocket unit will do this. If they want to attack big targets, or get to an enemy antitank cell hiding around them, the classic artillery guns will provide the big firepower,” the commander added.

“The firepower is available because of the Digital Ground Army network. In the exercise, within a day or two, we saw this in action, we saw the units talking to each other.”

Ultimately, the officer said, the Artillery Corps would like to create what he called a “canopy of firepower” over maneuvering forces that move in hostile territory.

To accomplish that, artillery units will have to accompany maneuvering forces over the border rather than hang back and provide supporting fire, as they did during the conflict with Hamas in Gaza last summer. “In the North, I can’t stay back. I have to advance with the forces, at their speed. The link between the Armored and Artillery Corps enabled us to learn how to cater to each other’s needs. They will guard my units from threats in Lebanon, and I will provide very deadly and powerful firepower,” the source said.

“This integration is vital. The message I want to pass on to my battalion is: Do not be confused by past wars. We will not be standing back on the international border and firing in the next round. We will, it seems, find ourselves maneuvering with the forces, and we have to know how to integrate with them.”

A second senior IDF source said Thursday that the past week was unusual due to the intensity of the exercises, but stressed that all of them had been planned well in advance and had no relation to any recent developments.

“The goal this week is to increase our training, with an emphasis on reserves,” the source said. One of the big exercises was held by the IDF Technology and Logistics Branch, which saw 240 vehicles taking part.

“They tested a new command and control center and checked their ability to deploy heavy vehicles to battle zones. Around 1,500 reservists were called up by the Transportation Center,” the source said.

An additional large drill involved the Northern Command’s 36th reserve Armored Division, which, like the 282 Artillery Support Unit, used the Jordan Valley to simulate a Lebanese battleground. In that drill, tank fire capabilities were put to the test.

A third exercise involved the reserves, the Infantry’s 16th Brigade, and was held on the Golan Heights. “This centered on the actions a reservist brigade will have to take when it is called into action,” the source said. “We want to reach a situation in which a battalion commander will know that if a drill is scheduled for six months from now, it will be held on time,” he said.

“We want to stick to the intense training plan for 2015. We are approaching levels of training that are higher than in past years. The aim is to allow a maximum number of exercises,” he added.

The IDF has so far stuck to this plan, and, barring any major surprise security escalations, it expects to continue to do so in the coming months, according to the source.