"We continue to receive reports of depredations – including extrajudicial killings and summary executions – against children and women, as well as male civilians, by ISIL as Iraqi Government forces close in on Mosul. We also continue to receive information that reinforces the belief that ISIL are deliberately using civilians as human shields – forcing them to move to sites where ISIL fighters are based, or preventing them from leaving other places for strategic reasons," Colville said at a briefing.
Colville noted that it was still hard to immediately verify all the reports and they should be treated as "preliminary and not definitive."
"On Saturday, 22 October, ISIL fighters are reported to have shot dead three women and three children – all girls — and wounded a further four children from a village called Rufeila in the al-Qayyarah sub-district, which also lies to the south of Mosul," Colville said as an example.
On October 17, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi announced the start of a military operation to retake Mosul from Daesh. According to local media, about 30,000 Iraqi soldiers and 4,000 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters are taking part in the operation, backed by airstrikes carried out by the US-led international coalition.
Iraq, along with neighboring Syria, has been suffering from the advance of Daesh, which is outlawed in Russia and the Untied States as well as in many other countries. The radical group has become notorious for its brutal acts of terrorism and human rights atrocities.
