UN official accuses Islamic State of widespread atrocities in Iraq
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ISLAMIST fighters have carried out atrocities on “an unimaginable scale” in months of fighting with Iraqi forces, who have also killed detainees and shelled civilian areas, a United Nations official said yesterday.
There is “strong evidence” Islamic State and allied groups have carried out targeted killings, forced conversions, sexual abuse and torture in Iraq, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Flavia Pansieri said, opening an emergency debate on the conflict in Geneva.
Iraq’s human rights minister, Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani, told the session that Islamic State militants, “oozing with barbarity,” threatened his country and the world, but did not immediately respond to allegations against state troops.
Islamic State has grabbed large areas of Iraq and neighboring Syria, declaring a cross-border caliphate and driving hundreds of thousands from their homes. At least 1,420 people were killed in Iraq in August alone, UN figures showed yesterday.
The one-day UN Human Rights Council session, called by Iraq with the support of allies, including the United States, is expected to agree to Baghdad’s request to send a team of UN experts to investigate crimes committed in the conflict.
“The reports we have received reveal acts of inhumanity on an unimaginable scale,” Pansieri told the Council, on its first meeting about the latest surge in violence. She later said she was referring to Islamic State.
Iraqi government forces, police and allied militia had also committed acts that may amount to war crimes, she added.
Human Rights Watch said yesterday it had “credible evidence”, including photographs, that Islamic State forces had used ground-fired cluster munitions in northern Syria — the first known use of cluster munitions by the militants, although the New York-based watchdog says government forces have used them since 2012.
Pansieri said she was particularly worried about the persecution of Christians, Yazidis, Shia, Turkmen and other ethnic groups by Islamic State forces that have swept through western and northern Iraq. Such “ethnic and religious cleansing” may amount to crimes against humanity, she said.
Children belonging to targeted minorities have been forcibly recruited and positioned on front lines to shield Islamic State fighters or made to donate blood, she said. Women are beaten for breaking rules requiring them to be veiled and escorted by men.
Iraqi police have also executed detainees in Tal Afar and government-allied militias opened fire on a mosque in Khanaqin district northeast of Baghdad killing 73 men and boys, she revealed.
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