ISIS executes 25 in Mosul
(IraqiNews.com) Baghdad – Islamic State militants have executed 25 civilians over accusations of spying for Iraqi security services, the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights said Wednesday.
The victims were brought from different regions of Nineveh, according to the commission’s media director, Jawad al-Shamari.
“The group maintains the dead bodies of those executed at the forensic medicine facility, and refuses to hand them over to their relatives, arguing that they were infidels and should not be buried,” Shamari said, quoting sources inside the city.
“Those sources have also confirmed that ISIS had captured 2000 citizens and drove them to Tal Afar to use them as human shields, also accusing them of treason and several other accusations,” he added.
“The group arrests citizens who are found to possess cellphones, computers and other communication tools and executes them,” said al-Shamari.
Iraqi government forces and its allied paramilitaries have entered a month of operations to retake Mosul, ISIS’s last bastion in the country.
On Tuesday, Brig.Gen. Nibras al-Makkoki, a spokesperson for the defense ministry’s Joint Forces Command, said ISIS had been amassing families from several neighborhoods in western Mosul inside schools, vowing to kill violators. “The group is trying to use civilians as human shields…and booby-trapped several houses and civilian vehicles.”
As for the humanitarian situation, Makkoki said, quoting his sources in Mosul, that electricity had been cut from most of the city for two days, with water and medical supplies short of demand.
5K civilians caught between ISIS and Iraqi militia forces
(IraqiNews.com) Nineveh – Mayor of al-Hadr district (located to the west of Mosul), Ali al-Ahmadi, declared that more than five thousand civilians are besieged in the district and areas of Tel Abta, by members of the Islamic State and al-Hashd al-Shaabi militia.
The Mayor said in a press statement that the district is suffering from lack of food, water and health care for more than a month.
Ahmadi also appealed to officials to rescue the people of al-Hadr district and Tel Abta, after the emergence of epidemic diseases among children such as skin rush and poisoning, due to the usage of polluted water of artesian wells, which is the only water source in the area.
Meanwhile, al-Hashd al-Shaabi shia militia announced isolating the district of al-Hadr and Tel Abta area from Mosul without storming into it, within a phase they call the third phase that aims to reach and liberate Tel Afar district, west of Mosul.
ISIS executes dozens in Mosul for spying
[ARA News] Zakho – The radical group of Islamic State (ISIS) has executed dozens of civilians in Mosul City of Iraq’s northwestern Nineveh Governorate on charges of spying for “enemy forces”, activists and eyewitnesses reported on Thursday.
ISIS extremists on Thursday executed at least 32 civilians, mostly young men, in the city of Mosul, after accusing them of spying for the Iraqi Army and the Kurdish Peshmerga forces.
This comes amid intensifying military operations by the Peshmerga and the Iraqi forces against the ISIS main Iraqi bastion of Mosul, where the group has lost key areas to the US-backed Kurdish and Iraqi troops in the past three weeks.
Local sources told ARA News that the ISIS-led Islamic Police, also known as Diwan al-Hisba, arrested more than 40 people earlier on Wednesday.
“At least 32 arrestees were executed on Thursday by fighting squad after ISIS accused them of leaking information about the group’s deployments in Mosul city,” head of Nineveh Media Centre Raafat al-Zarari told ARA News.
The pro-ISIS Sharia Court of Mosul said in a statement that the suspects had communicated with ‘enemy forces’, in reference to the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Iraqi government forces. The court determined that those communications represented the men’s conscious abandonment of Islam.
“The arrested men were charged with treason,” local media activist Abdullah al-Malla told ARA News. “They were publicly executed in central Mosul on Thursday.”
Muhammad Abd-Rabouh, a member of the Iraqi Parliament, said that the recent executions indicate a state of panic among ISIS ranks.
“As the Iraqi forces continue their progress towards the heart of Mosul city, ISIS tries to show the people that it’s still in control,” the Iraqi MP said. “Publicly executing innocent civilians in such a brutal way on charges of spying and treason is a clear indication to the group’s collapse inside Mosul.”
“Soon Mosul will be liberated, and the world won’t see such barbaric acts in this city anymore,” he said.