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Iraqi soldiers regained control of part of an important highway connecting Baghdad to the northern part of the country, where human rights organization Amnesty International said extremists have been carrying out ethnic cleansing.
Iraqi soldiers backed by militia have been on a push north after ending an extremist siege by fighters from the Islamic State (IS) in the Shi’ite Turkmen town of Amerli. Outgoing Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki visited the town on Monday, and said that the army will turn Iraq into a “graveyard” for the IS.
A senior UN human rights official had said that the extremist group had carried out “acts of inhumanity on an unimaginable scale” since it seized most of the Sunni Arab heartland to the north of Baghdad back in June, before storming minority Christian as well as Yazidi Kurdish territory in August.
Amnesty International has accused the extremists of “war crimes, including mass summary killings and abductions”.
“The massacres and abductions being carried out by the Islamic State provide harrowing new evidence that a wave of ethnic cleansing against minorities is sweeping across northern Iraq”, Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s senior crisis response adviser, said.
IS militants have carried out public stoning, crucifixions and beheading in territory under its control in Syria and Iraq, which it has declared as an Islamic “caliphate”.
The advance in Amerli came on Sunday, and as the Iraqi army’s biggest success after it had collapsed in most of north-central and northern Iraq in June. The US has been carrying out limited air strikes during the Amerli operation, marking the first time it has broadened beyond the north in over three weeks.
On Tuesday, Iraqi troops regained control of a part of the main highway connecting the northern part of the country to Baghdad; according to Army Staff Lieutenant General Abdulamir al-Zaidi, the highway was under extremist control for almost three months. According to sources, it will be days before the road reopens, as sappers need to clear it of booby-traps and mines planted by the retreating extremists.