Forces Drag, Mutilate Dead ISIS Fighters
Militiamen, Iraqi Security Forces, and civilians mutilated and dragged the bodies of at least five dead fighters of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in the Iraqi town of Qayyarah on October 3, 2016. Anti-ISIS fighters also executed at least one ISIS fighter after he surrendered. “The Iraqi government should control its own forces […]Militiamen, Iraqi Security Forces, and civilians mutilated and dragged the bodies of at least five dead fighters of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in the Iraqi town of Qayyarah on October 3, 2016. Anti-ISIS fighters also executed at least one ISIS fighter after he surrendered.
“The Iraqi government should control its own forces and hold them accountable if it hopes to claim the moral upper hand in its fight against ISIS,” said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The failure to hold commanders and abusers to account does not bode well for the looming battle inside Mosul. Mutilation of corpses is a war crime, as is killing captured combatants or civilians.”
Iraqi government forces retook Qayyarah, 60 kilometers south of Mosul, from ISIS on August 25. On October 3, three residents told Human Rights Watch, ISIS fighters unsuccessfully tried to retake the city, approaching north through the desert. Some of their fighters were captured and killed. At the time of the attack, the residents said, both Iraqi troops and Hashad al-Asha’rimilitia fighters from the Maraeed tribe, local to Qayyarah, and a branch of al-Jabouri tribe, one of the largest Sunni Arab tribes in Iraq, were in the town and repelled the attack.
