ISIS Militants Post Images Of Mass Killings In Iraq
Hours after The Inquisitr reported about militant group ISIS using Twitter to share images of beheadings, using the #WorldCup2014 hashtag, ABC News is reporting about tweets and images sent out by the group that point towards mass executions. The ISIS (also called the ISIL) which has managed to seize most of northern Iraq from the government has posted multiple images showing mass executions of people who are believed to be captured Iraqi soldiers. The images first appeared on a militant website and has been since then shared on various social media outlets, notably Twitter.
#ISIS release 60 photos of fighters executing Iraqi soldiers in Salah al-Din province round Tikrit. Shocking. #Iraq pic.twitter.com/Rvr889ZCk1
— Jon Williams (@WilliamsJon) June 15, 2014
Many of the images show the militants of ISIS loading captured soldiers on to flatbed trucks and carrying them. The men are then forced to lie face down in a shallow ditch while their arms are tied around behind their backs. The men are then shot at from close range. The final images show the captured men lying dead soaked in a pool of blood.
The accompanying caption with the gruesome images state that the killings were made to avenge the death of an ISIS commander Abdul-Rahman al-Beilawy, who was killed shortly before ISIS captured the cities of Mosul and Tikrit in northern Iraq. Tikrit also happens to be the hometown of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Top military officials from the Iraqi army have confirmed that the photos are indeed genuine and that the killings have taken place. Officials from the United Nations too have confirmed that “murder of all kinds” and other war crimes in Iraq are rampant in Iraq now. The UN has also said that deaths from the killings would run in to the thousands.
There are still some doubts if the people being executed in the images were military men or civilians. This is because most of them were seen in civilian clothes. It is now assumed that these soldiers might have disguised themselves as civilians as a last resort to escape from the ISIS. There is still no clarity as to when the incident actually occurred although the location of the killings is believed to be somewhere in the Salahuddin province.
Meanwhile,the advance of the ISIS towards Baghdad has raised concerned about the possibility of Iraq falling apart. The conflict is largely gaining momentum as a full scale war between the Shias and Sunnis of the region. The United States while ruling out the possibility of any ground troops intervening, has dispatched an aircraft carrier to the region. There could be strikes from air crafts and drones in an attempt to quell the march of ISIS towards Baghdad.
