Latest ISIL mass execution kills 50 in Iraq

BAGHDAD // ISIL lined up and shot dead at least 50 Iraqi tribesmen, women and children yesterday, officials said, the latest mass murder by militants who have killed some 150 members of the tribe in the past four days.

The dead belonged to Sunni Al Bu Nimr tribe that ISIL now apparently views as a threat, though some Sunnis backed the expansion of the group and other militants into the volatile province in December.

Meanwhile, separate attacks around Baghdad killed at least 19 people, authorities said.

Yesterday’s attack on the Sunni tribe took place in the village of Ras Al Maa, north of Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar. There, ISIL killed at least 40 men, six women and four children, lining them up and killing them one by one before many witnesses, Sheikh Naim Al Gaoud, a senior tribesman, said. The militants also kidnapped another 17 people, he said.

ISIL killed 50 Al Bu Nimr on Friday and 48 the day before.

The terrorist group has overrun a large part of Anbar in its push to expand its territory across Iraq and Syria. Officials with the Iraqi government, as well as officials with the US-led coalition targeting the extremists, said that Iraqi tribes are key elements in the fight against ISIL since they are able to penetrate areas inaccessible to airstrikes and ground forces.

However, some Sunnis in Anbar supported militants – including the Sunni militants of ISIL – when they seized Fallujah and parts of Ramadi in December.

That came after widespread Sunni protests against the Shiite-led government in Baghdad for what they described as second-hand treatment.

Since ISIL’s major offensive in Iraq, a number of Iraq’s Sunni tribes have been fundamental in stalling its advance, taking up arms and fighting alongside Iraqi security forces.

Ramadi has yet to fall in part because key Sunni tribes in the city. The Jughaifi and Al Bunimer tribes have helped Iraqi special forces protect the Haditha Dam in Anbar. In the battleground town of Dhuluiyah, the Jabbouri tribe has been the sole resistance to an ISIL takeover.

Iraqi prime minister Haider Al Abadi and his new government have vowed to create a community-driven national guard that would empower local tribes. Other tribes have not been won over, and have allied themselves with the militant group as a means for contesting the Shiite-led government.

Elsewhere yesterday, a car-bomb attack near tents serving Shiite pilgrims killed 14 people and wounded 32 in Baghdad, police and medical officials said.

They said the bombing in Baghdad’s Bayaa district struck as people delivered food to pilgrims heading to the holy city of Karbala to mark the religious holiday of Ashoura.

Later on, authorities said, a roadside bomb explosion targeting an army patrol killed two soldiers and wounded four in Baghdad’s western suburb of Abu Ghraib.

In eastern Baghdad, police said a bomb in a commercial street in the Al-Ameen district killed three people and wounded four.

Meanwhile, in Syria, US military forces staged seven airstrikes on ISIL on Saturday and yesterday and were joined by allies in two more attacks in Iraq, US Central Command said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said yesterday that nearly 2,000 people have died in Syrian prisons of torture, starvation and lack of medical treatment so far this year.

The Britain-based monitor said it had documented 1,917 deaths in Syrian prisons since the start of 2014, among them 27 children under the age of 18 and 11 women.

Earlier this year, 55,000 photos smuggled out of Syria by a former Syrian military police photographer gave a glimpse of some of the abuses being committed.

The Observatory said the bodies of some of those killed in jail were turned over to their relatives, while other families were simply told their loved ones had died and instructed to collect a death certificate.

In some cases families were forced to sign documents saying their relatives had been killed by opposition forces, according to the Observatory which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria.

The monitor said some 200,000 people are being detained by the regime in jails and other government facilities.

Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said a lack of accountability had led to widespread deaths in prison.

“When the killer knows that there is no punishment, he keeps on committing his crimes and commits even more,” he said.

Nearly 190,000 have been killed since the Syrian civil war began in March 2011 as a movement to overthrow president Bashar Al Assad.

* Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters