UN human rights team to examine IS crimes in Iraq

The United Nations agreed on Monday to send investigators to Iraq to examine crimes being committed by Islamic State fighters on "an unimaginable scale," with a view to holding perpetrators to account.

"We are facing a terrorist monster," Iraqi Human Rights Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani told the council, decrying acts "equivalent to genocide and crimes against humanity.”

The special session was called at Baghdad's request, with support from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — among other countries.

The members of the United Nations' top rights body, meeting in Geneva, reached their decision on Monday after spending the day listening to details of abuses and crimes attributed to the Islamic State, including massacres, forced conversions, abductions, slavery, sexual violence and the use of children as soldiers and suicide bombers. 

A fact-finding mission of 11 investigators will go to Iraq within the next couple of weeks, a spokesman for the U.N. human rights office said.

The Sunni fighters have driven more than 1.2 million people from their homes this year, the United Nations says. At least 1,420 people were killed in sectarian violence in Iraq in August alone, U.N. figures showed on Monday.

U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Flavia Pansieri said there was "strong evidence" Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and allied groups had carried out targeted killings, forced conversions, sexual abuse and torture in Iraq.

"The reports we have received reveal acts of inhumanity on an unimaginable scale," she said.

Pansieri voiced concern at the persecution of Christians, Yazidis, Shia, and Turkmen, saying such "ethnic and religious cleansing" may amount to crimes against humanity.

Children belonging to targeted minorities have been forcibly recruited and positioned on front lines to shield fighters or made to donate blood, she said. Women are beaten for breaking rules requiring them to be veiled and escorted by men.

Al-Sudani told the session that Islamic State, "oozing with barbarity," was threatening the makeup of his country.

"They are attempting to change its demographic and cultural composition," he said, adding: "Acts by ISIS threaten not only Iraq but the whole region and world."

Pansieri raised concerns that Iraqi government forces had also engaged in acts that may amount to war crimes.

She said government-allied militias had opened fire on a mosque in Khanaqin district, northeast of Baghdad, killing 73 men and boys. Iraqi soldiers had shelled towns and carried out airstrikes killing and injuring dozens of civilians, she added.

The U.S. envoy to the rights forum, Keith Harper, urged Iraq's prime minister designate, Haider al-Abadi, to form a multiethnic government that would investigate allegations against government forces and "terrorist groups."

Al-Sudani, asked whether the U.N. investigators would look into alleged crimes by government forces, said they would focus on those committed by the Sunni fighters and that the Baghdad government would look into allegations against state forces.

"These are allegations of crimes perpetrated by the government and we have a transparent investigation by our own government which will soon be deposited with all concerned members of the Human Rights Council," he said.

The IS has grabbed large swathes of Iraq's Sunni heartland since June 9. The Islamic State (IS) is an Al-Qaeda breakaway group that has established what it calls a caliphate across swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria.

In August, Washington launched airstrikes against IS positions in northern Iraq to bolster Kurdish resistance against the fighters. The IS also warned the U.S. against continued attacks after announcing the beheading of journalist James Foley — claiming they would kill more hostages unless the aggression ended.

Al Jazeera and wire services