19,000 death toll from ISIL in Iraq

United Nations report describes the ‘staggering’ loss of life in the two years since extremists declared ‘caliphate’

GENEVA // Nearly 19,000 civilians have been killed and more than 36,000 injured in Iraq in the two years since ISIL declared its “caliphate”, the United Nations said yesterday.

A report by Unami, the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, and the UN human rights agency described the death toll as “staggering”.

The 18,802 people killed were only from documented casualties between January 1, 2014 and October 31 last year and the actual numbers are probably far higher.

“These are the minimum figures … in terms of the impact of the violence on civilians,” Unami chief Francesco Motta said. UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said the numbers referred only to those killed in violence and did not take into account people who had died from the broader impact of conflict.

“Even the obscene casualty figures fail to accurately reflect exactly how terribly civilians are suffering in Iraq,” he said. “Countless others have died from the lack of access to basic food, water or medical care.”

About 3.2 million people have been internally displaced in Iraq since the beginning of 2014, including more than one million school-aged children, according to the UN.

The report accused ISIL of “systematic and widespread violence and abuses of international human rights law and humanitarian law”. The UN also documented offences and abuses committed by Iraqi security forces and associated militia and other groups, including killings and abductions.

But the report gave particular attention to the atrocities committed by ISIL, 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 condemned reports of ISIL murdering child soldiers who tried to escape.

In one incident, on August 14, ISIL militants killed 18 children for having run away from fighting on the front line, following a ruling from a self-appointed ISIL court, the report said.

The extremists continue “to subject women and children to sexual violence, particularly in the form of sexual slavery”, it said, and about 3,500 people were being held in ISIL slavery.

“These acts may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly genocide,” according to the report, which was based largely on witness and victim testimony. The report said numerous mass graves had been discovered in Iraq, including several in areas that had been liberated from ISIL control, each containing the remains of dozens of people.