Islamic
State militants have carried out mass executions, set up slave markets
where women are sold for sex for $10 and used child soldiers in what may
amount to systematic war crimes in Iraq that demand prosecution, the UN
has reported.
It
said ISIS fighters had committed gross human rights violations of an
'increasing sectarian nature' against groups including Christians,
Yazidis and Shi'ite Muslims in a widening conflict that has forced 1.8
million Iraqis to flee their homes.
UN
Investigators believe as many as 2,500 women and children have been
captured, subjected to sex attacks and then sold for around $10 a head
by extremist militants in Iraq.
Barbaric: A UN report has confirmed a
series of atrocities committed by the Islamic State including this mass
execution of around 1,500 Iraqi soldiers and security officers in the
Salahuddin province of Iraq in June
However,
the report also said Iraqi government air strikes on the Muslim
militants had caused 'significant civilian deaths' by hitting villages, a
school and hospitals in violation of international law.
UN
High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein said: 'The
array of violations and abuses perpetrated by ISIL and associated armed
groups is staggering, and many of their acts may amount to war crimes or
crimes against humanity.'
In
a statement, he called again for the Baghdad government to join the
International Criminal Court, saying the Hague court was set up to
prosecute such massive abuses and direct targeting of civilians on the
basis of their religious or ethnic group.
There have been reports of hundreds of
Yazidi women and children being sold at jihadi slave markets. In this
picture a displaced Yazidi girl takes shelter at a school in Dahuk
According to investigators, slave
markets have been set up in Raqqa, Syria and the al-Quds area of Maturat
in Iraq partly to attract new Islamic State fighters. This Yazidi
woman, holding a child, is shown taking shelter in a school after being
displaced from her home
The
report said the ISIS atrocities 'include attacks directly targeting
civilians and civilian infrastructure, executions and other targeted
killings of civilians, abductions, rape and other forms of sexual and
physical violence perpetrated against women and children, forced
recruitment of children, destruction or desecration of places of
religious or cultural significance, wanton destruction and looting of
property, and denial of fundamental freedoms.'
In
a single massacre on June 12, about 1,500 Iraqi soldiers and security
officers from the former U.S. Camp Speicher military base in Salahuddin
province were captured and killed by Islamic State fighters, according
to the 29-page report by the UN Human Rights Office and the U.N.
Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).
However, the bodies have not been exhumed and the precise toll is not known.
Persecuted: The report also said ISIS
snatched hundreds of women and girls, predominantly from the Yazidi
(above) and Christian communities, and took them to Syria as a reward or
to be sold as sex slaves
No
one disputes that Iraqi military recruits were led off the base near
Tikrit unarmed and then machine gunned in their hundreds into mass
graves by Islamic State, whose fighters boasted of the killings on the
Internet.
Women
have been treated particularly harshly, the report said: 'ISIL (has)
attacked and killed female doctors, lawyers, among other professionals.'
In
August, it said, ISIS took 450-500 women and girls to the Tal Afar
citadel in Iraq's Nineveh region where '150 unmarried girls and women,
predominantly from the Yazidi and Christian communities, were reportedly
transported to Syria, either to be given to ISIS fighters as a reward
or to be sold as sex slaves'.
According
to investigators, slave markets have been set up in Raqqa, Syria and
the al-Quds area of Maturat in Iraq partly to attract new Islamic State
fighters.
The
Times reports that the UN has been contacted by captured women who had
managed to keep their mobile phones and reported being sexually abused.
The
newspaper says that 500 women were reported as having been taken when a
Yazidi village in northwest Iraq was overrun by militants.
It
quotes a Euronews interview with a 19-year-old mother whose husband was
shot by Isis fighters as they swept through the Sinjar area in northern
Iraq before she was sold in Mosul.
The
woman, named as Amsha, is reported as saying: One Yazidi woman was
given to 10 Muslim ISIL men. We were sold for $10 or $12. Who could
accept that behaviour? Can God accept that?'
But
the UN report also voiced deep concern at violations committed by the
Baghdad government and allied fighters, including air strikes and
shelling that may not have distinguished between military targets and
civilian areas.
At
least 9,347 civilians had been killed and 17,386 wounded so far through
September, well over half of them since the Islamist insurgents began
seizing large parts of northern Iraq in early June, the UN said.
Turkish army tanks are transported
close to the Syrian border as its parliament prepare to vote on whether
to vote to allow its military to enter Iraq and Syria as well as letting
foreign troops to use its territory against ISIS
A Turkish soldier holds a lost baby as
he looks for its mother as thousands of new Syrian refugees arrive in
Turkey from the town of Kobani which is under siege from ISIS militants
Islamic
State and allied groups have attacked and destroyed places of religious
and cultural significance in Iraq that do not conform to its 'takfiri'
doctrine, the U.N. report said, referring to the beliefs of Sunni
militants who justify their violence by branding others as apostates.
Islamic
State pushed on with its assault on a Syrian border town today despite
coalition air strikes meant to weaken them, sending thousands more
Kurdish refugees into Turkey and dragging Ankara deeper into the
conflict.
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