BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq’s human rights minister said that hundreds of Yezidi and Shiite women were held captive by the Islamic State (IS/ISIS) armies, amid reports they are being sexually abused and sold as slaves.
Muhammad Shiya Sundani also told reporters in Baghdad the militants were killing Turkmen in Tuz Khurmatu and had massacred hundreds of Shiite Iraqi soldiers and aviation students at a military base in Tikrit.
“The ISIS militias have kidnapped more than 690 Yezidi and Shiite women,” Sudani said. “These women are currently being held and tortured in two prisons in Shingal and at the Asar School in Tel Afar,” he added.
Since the fall of the Yezidi town of Shingal earlier this month, and Tel Afar with its smaller Yezidi community, there have been harrowing reports of killings and all kinds of other atrocities committed by the IS fighters.
Christians have also been viciously driven from their homes since the fall of Mosul in June, but the Yezidis have been in greater danger because of their faith, regarded as “unbelievers” by the militants.
There have been reports of Yezidi women herded together like animals and daily picked out for sex with the militants and their leaders.
Earlier this week, on a hidden phone and in secret phone calls, a Yezidi girl held with 200 others as war booty at an IS prison near Mosul, painted a tragic picture of girls being singled out daily as sex slaves, and some committing suicide.
Every day, IS fighters visited the prison hall to pick out the prettiest for their emirs, said the girl, who told her story to a Rudaw reporter as she wept on the phone, sometimes abruptly breaking the conversation as she heard guards approaching.
The Iraqi minister said the militants had killed hundreds of Yezidis and others.
“ISIS has so far killed 420 Yezidi citizens and imprisoned 75 Shiite women in Shingal town. There are also 15 more women imprisoned by ISIS in the town of Jurf al-Sukhr in the province of Babil,” he added.
Sundani also mentioned that his ministry was closely investigating reports that abducted Yezidi and Shiite girls are being sold as slaves at markets in regions under IS control.
The minister added that, for the past several weeks IS had laid siege to the Turkmen town of Amrli in Tuz Khurmatu, killing residents on a regular basis.
He also said his ministry had recorded the names of 800 Shiite soldiers and aviation students who had gone missing at the Speicher military Base in Tikrit, suspected massacred by IS.
He said Iraq is taking the killings of the soldiers and air force cadets to the Human Rights Council in Geneva next month.
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