Iraq War Crimes on an Industrial Scale

Iraq War Crimes on an Industrial Scale

War crimes are being committed by Al Qaeda-spawned fighters and from ISIS militants on an industrial scale, according to reports emerging from war-ravaged Iraq.

UN high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay has expressed his “extreme alarm” at the reports and images of everything from summary executions, to rapes, kidnappings and wholesale slaughter occurring in Sunni-controlled northern Iraq.

The developments have followed the conquest Tuesday of one of Iraq’s largest cities by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.

Iraqi refugees from Mosul at the Khazir refugee camp outside Irbil, some of the more than 500,000 who have fled the city since Islamic extremists invaded on Tuesday.

ISIS fighters freed and armed prisoners from Mosul jails who “have been actively seeking out — and in some cases killing — soldiers, police and others, including civilians — whom they perceive as being associated with the government,” Pillay said.

The summary executions reported to the Geneva office included 17 civilians slain on a single street of Mosul, said Rupert Colville, spokesman for the U.N. rights office, the LA Times reports.

Iraqis fleeing Mosul after the militants’ onslaught said four women had committed suicide after being raped by the insurgents, Colville said.

The reports of massacres and other brutal activity continue to surface, leading to increasing claims of massive war crimes being committed in Iraq.

The Daily Mirror reports on the  mass killing of prisoners captured from the Iraq army, saying that an unapologetic Tony Blair has denied he was to blame for the recent horrors in Iraq – as gruesome images exposed the bloody legacy of his 2003 invasion.

As the fragile country hurtled towards self-destruction, graphic pictures showed dozens of Iraqi soldiers being shot at point blank range by masked Jihadist militiamen.

The pictures, uploaded to the website Welayat Salahuddin, showed handcuffed Iraqi soldiers being bundled out of trucks and marched towards shallow ditches.

There they are forced to lie face down in the dirt by gunmen from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.

One of the victims of the apparent mass execution seems to be untied and praying in the background, pleading to be spared. But then the Isis fighters unleash their assault rifles on the cowering young men in the murder pit, presumably killing all there. The bloodbath is thought to have taken place in Salaheddin, the violence-strewn province north of Baghdad. It is feared the victims are some of the 1,700 Iraqis executed by the al-Qaeda offshoot in recent days.

See more at the BBC

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