The United Nations is sending Human Rights investigators to Iraq to document reports of “acts of inhumanity on an unimaginable scale”.  These include beheadings, crucifixions, and other killings; forced conversions; slavery and sexual abuse.

UN Deputy Human Rights Commissioner Flavia Pansieri told an emergency meeting in Geneva that some acts had been committed by Iraqi troops, but the vast majority of atrocities are the work of Islamic State (IS).  And these are part of a pattern of systematic and intentional attacks on civilians.

The list of communities “targeted through particularly brutal persecution” is lengthy – Christian, Yazidi, Turkmen, Shabak, Kaka’i, Sabeans, Shiite – and Pansieri said that IS had “ruthlessly carried out what may amount to ethnic and religious cleansing”.

“Hundreds of thousands of civilians from these communities have fled to remote and desolate locations where unconfirmed reports indicate that scores of children, elderly people and people with disabilities have been dying as a result of exhaustion and deprivation,” said Pansieri.

The stories of Islamic State’s barbarity are already legendary and videos are not difficult to find on file sharing services.  I’m not posting links, because Islamic State’s handiwork is disgusting.  The Yazidi, a minority sect related to the ancient Zoroastrian religion, have been singled out for particularly harsh treatment.  Men who refused to convert were reportedly executed; women and young girls are given to IS fighters as slaves. 

“We are facing a terrorist monster,” Iraqi Human Rights Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, told the emergency session.

Last week, IS fighters took over a prison; the inmates claiming to be Sunni were led away, the rest were piled into ditches are murdered on the spot.