Posted June 27, 2014 21:29:58
Satellite imagery strongly suggests the extremist Sunni group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has conducted mass executions in Iraq, lobby group Human Rights Watch says.
ISIS, radical Islamists who want to re-create a mediaeval-style caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria, has stormed largely unopposed across much of northern Iraq, taking cities including Mosul and Tikrit, seizing border posts with Syria and advancing to within some 100 km of the capital Baghdad
In mid June, ISIS posted pictures on Twitter that appeared to show the massacre of 1,700 Iraqi soldiers after the fall of the city of Tikrit.
However there has been no independent verification.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said that between 160 and 190 men were killed in at least two locations in and around Tikrit - the hometown of late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein - between June 11 and 14.
It said that the death toll could be much higher, but the difficulty of locating bodies and getting to the area had prevented a full investigation.
'The photos and satellite images from Tikrit provide strong evidence of a horrible war crime that needs further investigation,' Human Rights Watch emergencies director Peter Bouckaert said in a statement.
'They and other abusive forces should know that the eyes of Iraqis and the world are watching.'
It was not immediately possible to get comment from ISIS.
1,000 killed in fighting: UN
The United Nations said on Tuesday that at least 1,000 people, mainly civilians, had been killed and roughly the same number injured in fighting and other violence in Iraq in June as ISIS swept through the north.
Victims included a number of confirmed summary executions committed by ISIS as well as prisoners killed by retreating Iraqi forces.
HRW counted the bodies visible in the available ISIS photographs and estimated that ISIS killed between 90 and 110 men in one trench and between 35 and 40 men in the second.
A further photograph shows a large trench with between 35 and 40 prisoners shot but Human Rights Watch said it had not been able to pinpoint the site.
A UN human rights spokesman said on Tuesday that ISIS had broadcast dozens of videos showing cruel treatment, beheadings and shootings of captured soldiers, police officers and people apparently targeted because of their religion or ethnicity, including Shi'ites and minorities such as Christians.
Northern units of Iraq's million-strong army, trained and equipped by the US, largely evaporated after Sunni Islamist fighters led by the ISIS launched their assault.
In Tikrit on Friday, Iraqi army helicopters fired on a university campus in an effort to dislodge ISIL fighters, a day after launching an airborne assault on the city.
ABC/ReutersTopics:unrest-conflict-and-war, iraq
Entities 0 Name: ISIS Count: 8 1 Name: Iraq Count: 6 2 Name: Tikrit Count: 5 3 Name: Human Rights Watch Count: 4 4 Name: Syria Count: 3 5 Name: Iraqi Count: 3 6 Name: Saddam Hussein Count: 1 7 Name: ISIL Count: 1 8 Name: US Count: 1 9 Name: Baghdad Count: 1 10 Name: UN Count: 1 11 Name: Islamic State Count: 1 12 Name: Mosul Count: 1 13 Name: Peter Bouckaert Count: 1 14 Name: UN The United Nations Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1pjMCnb Title: A Plan to Save Iraq From ISIS and Iran Description: The Middle East is in a downward spiral. More than 160,000 have died in Syria's civil war, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, aka ISIS, has captured key Iraqi cities and is marching on Baghdad, and the security investments made by the U.S. over the past decade-like them or not-are being frittered away.
