Dead bodies of Islamic State fighters dumped with trash: Nineveh official
Bodies of members of the Islamic State group.
Nineveh (IraqiNews.com) Left over after ferocious battles with security forces, Islamic State fighters’ dead bodies are dumped with garbage cleared from areas recaptured by government troops, a local official at Nineveh was quoted as saying.
Abdel-Sattar al-Habbou, a member of the Nineveh Province’s board, told AlMaalomah news website that “the majority of the dead bodies of Daesh (IS) fighters go with trash when concerned authorities carry out purging and cleaning works after liberation (of IS-held areas).”
He said deaths among the extremist group have jumped to more than 160 a day over the past few days as security forces besiege occupied areas and maintain a blockade over supplies to the group from western Mosul.
While rights and aid groups have regularly decried human rights abuses by Islamic State militants against Iraqi civilians since the group emerged in 2014, Iraqi government forces and allied militias have also, in some occasions, got a share of criticism.
“ Militiamen, Iraqi Security Forces, and civilians mutilated and dragged the bodies of at least five dead fighters of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in the Iraqi town of Qayyarah on October 3, 2016,” Human Rights Watch said in a report mid November.
“The Iraqi government should control its own forces and hold them accountable if it hopes to claim the moral upper hand in its fight against ISIS,” said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The failure to hold commanders and abusers to account does not bode well for the looming battle inside Mosul. Mutilation of corpses is a war crime, as is killing captured combatants or civilians.”