The killing season restarts in Iraq: more war crimes and crimes against humanity taking place in regions inhabited by religious minorities

ISIL executing civilians in Iraq

The killing season restarts in Iraq: more war crimes and crimes against humanity taking place in regions inhabited by religious minorities:

Militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria boasted on Twitter that they had executed 1,700 Iraqi government soldiers, posting gruesome photos to support their claim.

The authenticity of the photographs and the insurgents’ claim could not be verified, and Iraqi government officials initially cast doubt on whether such a mass execution took place. There were also no reports of large numbers of funerals in the Salahuddin Province area, where the executions were said to have been conducted.

If the claim is true, it would be the worst mass atrocity in either Syria or Iraq in recent years, surpassing even the chemical weapons attacks in the Syrian suburbs of Damascus last year, which killed 1,400 people and were attributed to the Syrian government. New York Times

Iraqi security forces found the burned bodies of 12 policemen when they recaptured a town north of Baghdad from militants on Saturday, a police colonel and a doctor said.

Troops backed by tribal militia recaptured Ishaqi in Salaheddin province as they readied a fightback against the offensive that saw Sunni Arab militants overrun a large chunk of northern and north-central Iraq this week.

It was one of the closest points to the capital that the militants had reached in the assault they launched in second city Mosul late on Monday. YME