UN accuses IS of genocide amid mounting Iraqi deaths

The number of civilians killed in violence in Iraq over the past two years is "staggering", the United Nations said on Tuesday, with at least 18,802 people losing their lives and another 36,245 suffering injuries. 

Those figures, which UN officials said were probably an underestimate, count casualties incurred from 1 January 2014 through to 31 October 2015, according to a report by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the UN human rights agency which also accused the Islamic State (IS) group of committing acts of possible genocide and other crimes against humanity.

"Even the obscene casualty figures fail to accurately reflect exactly how terribly civilians are suffering in Iraq," UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein warned in a statement.

"The figures capture those who were killed or maimed by overt violence, but countless others have died from the lack of access to basic food, water or medical care," he pointed out.

The UN said about 3.2 million people have been internally displaced in Iraq since the beginning of 2014 when IS took over large parts of the country, including more than one million children of school age.

The UN gave specific attention to the atrocities committed by IS, detailing "numerous examples of killings... in gruesome public spectacles, including by shooting, beheading, bulldozing, burning alive and throwing people off the top of buildings."

It also decried reports of IS murdering child soldiers who tried to flee, and lamented that the militants "continued to subject women and children to sexual violence, particularly in the form of sexual slavery".

"These acts may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide," the report said. 

The experts also said numerous mass graves had been discovered in Iraq, including in areas that had been under IS control, but also some dating back to the rule of Saddam Hussein.

The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Iraq, Jan Kubis, said that the international community must step up efforts to back the Iraqi government in areas it had reclaimed from IS.

"I call on the international community to enhance its support to the government of Iraq's humanitarian, stabilisation and reconstruction efforts in areas liberated from ISIL," he said, using a different acronym for the militant group, "so that all Iraqis displaced by violence can return to their homes in safety and in dignity and that affected communities can be re-established in their places of origin."

Recent weeks have seen a spate of attacks in and around Baghdad, with militants storming a shopping centre in Baghdad and a cafe district in Muqdadiya last week, killing dozens. Two suicide bombers blew themselves up inside a three-floor cafe building in the eastern Shia-dominated city of Muqdadiya, 90km northeast of Baghdad, killing at least 23 people, security and medical sources said.  

Muqdadiya's suicide attack was followed by violent responses in the town itself and the nearby town of Shahraban.

At least six Sunni mosques, seven houses and 36 stores were either burned or bombed late on Monday 11 January in Muqdadiya, local officials and residents told MEE.

Shia militias which have played a major part in fighting IS in Iraq since 2014 have also been accused of atrocities, although these did not feature in in the UNAMI report.