Islamic State Militants 'Burn 45 People to Death in Iraq'
Jihadist militants from Islamic State (IS) have burned to death 45 people in the western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi, the local police chief says.
BBC 18 Feb 2015
Exactly who these people were and why they were killed is not clear, but Col Qasim al-Obeidi said he believed some were members of the security forces.
IS fighters captured much of the town, near Ain al-Asad air base, last week.
Col Obeidi said a compound that houses the families of security personnel and local officials was now under attack.
He pleaded for help from the government and the international community.
The fighting and poor communications in the area make it difficult to confirm such reports.
Earlier this month, IS published a video showing militants burning alive a Jordanian air force pilot, whose plane crashed in Syria in December.
Siege
Al-Baghdadi had been besieged for months by Islamic State fighters before its fall on Thursday.
It had been one of the few towns to still be controlled by the Iraqi government in Anbar province, where IS and allied Sunni Arab tribesmen launched an offensive in January 2014.
Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm John Kirby told reporters on Friday that al-Baghdadi's capture needed to be put in perspective.
He said it was the first time in the last couple of months that the jihadist group had taken new ground.
However, Ain al-Asad air base, where about 320 US Marines are training members of the Iraqi army's 7th Division, is only 8km (5 miles) away.
The base was itself attacked by IS militants, among them several suicide bombers, on Friday. The militants were eventually repelled by Iraqi troops backed by US-led coalition aircraft.
In a separate development on Tuesday, the influential Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr announced he was withdrawing his forces from an umbrella group of Shia militia fighting IS alongside the Iraqi army.
He cited what he called the bad behaviour of other militia within the Popular Mobilisation Forces, whom he accused of "wreaking havoc through murdering, kidnapping and violating sanctuaries".
Shia militia have been accused of kidnapping and killing scores of Sunni civilians since Islamic State launched an offensive in northern Iraq last June that saw it seize large swathes of the country.
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UN Urged to Investigate ISIS's Bloody Trade in Human Organs After Iraqi Ambassador Reveals Doctors are Being Executed For Not Harvesting Body Parts
- Iraqi ambassador says corpses are being found with missing body parts
- Victims have been found in mass graves close to ISIS stronghold Mosul
- Mohamed Alhakim says doctors are killed if they refuse to harvest organs
- Horrifying trade in human organs is boosting ISIS' $2 million-a-day income
Daily Mail UK, 18 Feb 2015
Iraq has urged the United Nations to investigate Islamic State terrorists' bloody trade in human organs after the Iraqi ambassador said doctors are being executed for not harvesting body parts.
Mohamed Alhakim claimed that dozens of bodies with surgical incisions and missing body parts have been found in shallow mass graves near ISIS stronghold Mosul over the past few weeks.
ISIS' horrifying trade in human organs, which was revealed by MailOnline last December, is just the latest way for the terrorist organisation to finance its activities, with other major sources of the group's $2 million-a-day income being the sale of oil, ransom payments, and smuggled antiques.
Lucrative: ISIS has set up a specialist organ-smuggling division whose sole responsibility is to sell human hearts, livers and kidneys on the lucrative international black market
Speaking of ISIS' organ harvesting operations, Mr Alhakim said: 'We have bodies. Come and examine them. It is clear they are missing certain parts.'
He also said a dozen doctors have been 'executed' in Mosul for refusing to participate in organ harvesting.
Mr Alhakim briefed the UN Security Council on the overall situation in Iraq and accused ISIS of 'crimes of genocide' in targeting certain ethnic groups.
The outgoing UN envoy to Iraq, Nikolay Mladenov, also told the council that last month alone, 790 people were killed by terrorism and armed conflict in the country.
He also noted the increasing number of reports and allegations that IS is using organ harvesting as a financing method, but he said only that 'it's very clear that the tactics ISIL is using expand by the day'. He used an acronym for the group.
Making them rich: Mohamed Alhakim claimed that dozens of bodies with surgical incisions and missing body parts have been found in shallow mass graves near ISIS stronghold Mosul (pictured) over the past few weeks
Mr Mladenov said Iraq's most pressing goal is to win back the vast territory that ISIS has seized over the past year.
The Sunni militants currently controls around a third of both Iraq and neighbouring Syria and imposed its strict interpretation of Sharia law in its self-declared caliphate - subjecting a population of around four million people to a brutal campaign of rape and massacre.
'Especially worrying is the increasing number of reports of revenge attacks committed particularly against members of the Sunni community in areas liberated from ISIL control,' Mr Mladenov said, using an alternative acronym for the group known as ISIS in the West and Daesh in Arab nations.
The shocking news of ISIS trade in human organs was first revealed in a report by al-Monitor news website in December, citing an Iraqi ear, nose and throat doctor named Siruwan al-Mosuli.
He told the site that ISIS commanders hired foreign doctors to run an extensive organ trafficking system from a hospital in Mosul that is already beginning to generate huge profits.
Militants: Each of the letters is signed with a purple stamp, indicating the province from which it was sent. They are understood to have been handed to ISIS' network of messengers and fighters
The al-Monitor report also claims the terror organisation has even set up a specialist organ-smuggling division whose sole responsibility is to sell human hearts, livers and kidneys on the lucrative international black market.
'[Al-Mosuli] said that lately he noticed unusual movement within medical facilities in Mosul Arab and foreign surgeons were hired, but prohibited from mixing with local doctors,' the report's author wrote. 'Information then leaked about organ selling.'
The report went on: 'Surgeries take place within a hospital and organs are quickly transported through networks specialized in trafficking human organs. Mosuli said that the organs come from fallen fighters who were quickly transported to the hospital, injured people who were abandoned or individuals who were kidnapped.'
Most of the organs are then smuggled out of Syria and Iraq into neighboring countries like Saudi Arabia or Turkey where criminal gangs sell them on to shady buyers across the globe, the Assyrian International News Agency reported.
While organ harvesting may be the most shocking of IS' revenue streams, the report highlights a string of others that contribute to the group's $2million annual income.
Security: ISIS' horrifying trade in human organs, which was revealed by MailOnline last December, is just the latest way for the terrorist organisation to finance its activities, with other major sources of the group's $2 million-a-day income being the sale of oil, ransom payments, and smuggled antiques
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IS LIBYAN BEACH EXECUTIONER AN AMERICAN? EXPERTS CLAIM ISIS JIHADI SPOKE WITH U.S. ACCENT
Intelligence chiefs are investigating claims the Islamic State jihadi who led the executions of 21 Egyptians was an American recruit.
The militant, who spoke English with a U.S. accent, appeared in a horrific video on Sunday showing the beheadings of a group of Coptic Christians on a beach in Libya.
Brandishing a knife, he declares: 'All crusaders... the sea you have hidden Sheikh Osama bin Laden's body in, we swear to Allah we will mix it with your blood.'
The men are then forced to lie face-down before they are beheaded simultaneously.
U.S. officials are understood to be analysing the militant's facial features and speech patterns as has been done in the hunt for the British executioner known as Jihadi John, who has appeared in a number of beheading videos in Syria.
Professor Erik Thomas, a linguistics expert at North Carolina State University, believes he 'sounds like an American' with some Arabic influence, based on some of word pronunciations.
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One tactic is smuggling families and individuals into other countries. The report highlights one instance when a family paid ISIS over $8,000 per individual to sneak them into Turkey.
Drug smuggling is another. Al Monitor's report claims that IS traffics Afghan heroin into Europe from the city of Nineveh, which the Russian Federal Drug Control Service (RFDCS) says is generating 'significant revenues.'
Its drug business has become so successful in recent months that the RFDCS claims that IS now supplies half of Europe's entire heroin market.
Yesterday it was revealed that militants fighting for ISIS in Syria are making millions of pounds selling ancient statues and mosaics to wealthy Westerners using a complex system of smugglers and middle men.
Looted from ancient buildings in ISIS strongholds, such as the group's de facto capital city Raqqa, the antiquities are up to 10,000-years-old and can exchange hands for more than $1 million each.
The most expensive items are covertly smuggled overseas - usually on the orders of wealthy Europeans - but there is also a lucrative trade in less historically important objects, which often find their way into tourist shops and markets in neighbouring Lebanon and Turkey.
The trade in antiquities is one of ISIS' primary sources of funding, along with oil and ransom payments, and is estimated to fills the terrorists coffers with tens of millions of pounds every year.
The finer points of ISIS trade in antiquities was uncovered in an investigation by the BBC.
It revealed that ISIS militants charge smugglers 20 per cent on the sale of ancient items found or looted in territory under its control. If the smugglers decide not to buy the items, they are promptly smashed to pieces as examples of idolatry, regardless of their historic significance.