1. Skip to content
  2. Skip to main menu
  3. Skip to more DW sites

'Gruesome evidence of ethnic cleansing' in Iraq

September 2, 2014

Amnesty International claims to have found powerful evidence of systematic ethnic cleansing by the "Islamic State" jihadist group. Meanwhile, the United Nations has opted to send a team to investigate alleged atrocities.

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, is an unrecognized state and active Jihadist militant group in Iraq and Syria influenced by the Wahhabi movement.In its unrecognized self-proclaimed status as an independent state, it claims the territory of Iraq and Syria. Fewer than 1,000 fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant advanced against Iraq's largest city of Mosul on 10 June, sending two Iraqi army divisions (nearly 30,000 soldiers) to a chaotic retreat. Militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ihadist group have seized the north Iraqi cities of Mosul and Tikrit and have vowed to move on Baghdad to topple the Shiite-dominated government. Photo via ABACAPRESS.COM
Image: picture alliance/abaca

Rights group Amnesty International on Tuesday accused "Islamic State" (IS) militants of carrying out the systematic ethnic cleansing of minorities across northern Iraq, citing "hair-raising" accounts from witnesses.

In its report - "Ethnic cleansing on historic scale: the Islamic State's systematic targeting of minorities in northern Iraq" - the group claimed jihadists had committed "war crimes, including mass summary killings and abductions." Among the methods of execution mentioned were decapitations, crucifixions and public stoning.

"The Islamic State is carrying out despicable crimes and 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."

Amnesty said said two of the worst incidents took place in the Yazidi villages of Qiniyeh and Kocho, on August 3 and August 15, respectively.

"The number of those killed in these villages alone runs into the hundreds," it said. It cited survivors as saying that men and boys were bundled them into pick-up trucks and driven away "to be massacred in groups or shot individually"

The massacres and abductions being carried out by the Islamic State provide harrowing new evidence that a wave of ethnic cleansing against minorities is sweeping across northern Iraq," said Daniella Rovera, Amnesty International's Senior Crisis Response Adviser.

'Possibly thousands' abducted

Amnesty also documented mass abductions of women and children, saying "hundreds, possibly thousands" of Yazidis were seized by IS jihadists, along with scores of men.

The 47 members of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) decided on Monday to send an emergency mission to Iraq to investigate crimes committed by IS militants in both Iraq and Syria.

The special emergency session in Geneva was called by Iraq and France and supported by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, China, US, Russia, France and the UK.

"We are facing a terrorist monster. Acts by the ISIS threaten not only Iraq but the whole region and the world," Iraq's human rights minister, Mohammed Shia Al Sudani, told the council on Monday, referring to the IS by one of its other names.

The UNHCR, in its resolution, condemned "in the strongest possible terms systematic violations and abuses" and said that the IS' actions may amount to "war crimes and crimes against humanity."

In addition to its persecution of the Yazidis, IS is also believed to have targeted Shiites and members of the Christian community.

Kurdish fighters, Iraqi troops and Shiite militiamen on Monday continued to press their offensive against IS after breaking an IS siege of the town of Amirli, taking the nearby settlement of Suleiman Beg from the jihadists.

rc/jm (AFP, dpa, Reuters)

Skip next section Explore more
Skip next section DW's Top Story

DW's Top Story

Skip next section More stories from DW