Amnesty International says it has fresh evidence of the international community has long suspected. ISIS is carrying out a wave of ethnic cleansing that risks wiping entire communities off the map.
The extremist group, which also goes by the name the Islamic State, has boasted of its atrocities in northern Iraq — atrocities which Amnesty’s crisis response adviser described this way: "The Islamic State has transformed rural areas of Sinjar into blood-soaked killing fields in its brutal campaign to obliterate all trace of non-Arabs and non-Sunni Muslims."(Via YouTube /إبنُ الأزدَ)
Citing eyewitness accounts, the 26-page report documents “ several mass killings” where ISIS militants rounded up “children as young as 12” and shot them. The group also says “hundreds, possibly thousands, of women and children” have been abducted.
According to Amnesty, ISIS has targeted Assyrian Christians, Shiites, Yazidis, and other religious minorities — all of whom the militants have denounced as infidels.
But Amnesty is hardly the first group to accuse ISIS of human rights violations. The United Nations is also investigating ISIS.
FLAVIA PANSIERI, U.N. DEPUTY HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSIONER: “This includes targeted killings, forced conversions, abductions, slavery, sexual and physical abuse and torture.” (Video via BBC)
Back in June, ISIS militants claimed to have mass executed 1,700 Iraqi soldiers in Tikrit — posting a series of chilling photos as proof. The group claimed to have rounded up the soldiers and led them to a mass grave.
Using analysis of photographs and satellite imagery, Human Rights Watch says it has been able to confirm between 160 and 190 executions.
The U.N. estimates some 1,400 Iraqis, mostly civilians, were killed in August alone. The violence has forced more than 1 million to flee their homes since early June.
This video includes images from Getty Images.
