United Nations Report Accuses Islamic State of 'Staggering' Crimes Against Civilians in Iraq

The United Nations has published a report cataloguing "gross human rights abuses and acts of violence" committed by the Islamic State as it rages through Iraq in its bid to carve out a caliphate, concluding the group may be guilty of war crimes or crimes against humanity.

The study, jointly produced by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and based on 500 interviews, highlights what it describes as the "systematic" targeting of civilians by the Islamic State.

The Iraq conflict resulted in at least 11,159 recorded civilian casualties in just three months from June to August, the UN said, of whom 4,692 were killed. Yet the report stresses that the "actual numbers could be much higher."

 Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement: "The array of violations and abuses perpetrated by ISIL (the Islamic State) and associated armed groups are staggering, and many of their acts may amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity". He requested that Iraq accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court to investigate the reports.

The report said that the Islamic State had engaged in violent acts of an "increasingly sectarian nature." Highlighting attacks on various ethnic and religious groups, the UN said the group had engaged in "systematically" targeting Christians, Yazidis, Kurds and Shiites.

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Among the alleged abuses, the report details a massacre on June 12 in which around 1500 Iraqi security personnel from the former US Camp Speicher military base in Salah al-Din were captured or killed.

The UN also cites reports of mass abductions of women by the Islamist fighters. On August 2, the Yazidi village of Maturat witnessed the kidnapping of hundreds of women, it says, claiming that "ISIL herded approximately 450-500 woman and girls to the citadel of Tal Afar." Two days later 150 unmarried girls and woman, mainly from Yazidi and Christian communities, were transported to Syria "either to be given to ISIL fighters as a reward or be sold as sex slaves," the report states.

The special representative of the UN secretary general to Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, described the report as "terrifying." He said that the UN was also investigating hundreds of additional reported incidents involving the alleged systematic slaughter of civilians, which had yet to be verified.

The study also highlighted a number of rights violations allegedly committed by Iraqi security forces. It detailed extrajudicial killings and summary executions reportedly carried out by security forces and government-allied militia groups. In one such incident on July 31, 15 men said to have been captured Islamic State fighters were executed and hung from lamp posts in the city of Baquba by the armed group Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, the UN said.