ISIS uses mobile phone app to sell young Yazidi girls

ISIS is using a phone app to advertise women and girls as young as 12 years old "for sale."

One such ad posted in the Telegram app was hidden in an encrypted conversation among other posts selling random items from pets to weapons, according to a report from the Associated Press.

In August 2014, ISIS captured thousands of Yazidi women and children, who are now being held as sex slaves. At present, the extremist group is still holding an estimated 3,000 women and girls captive.

A number of these women have been set free through Arab and Kurdish smugglers, who have worked to help an average of 134 women escape ISIS every month. However, as ISIS lost parts of its territory to advancing forces, it has become more strict with the Yazidi captives.

Recently, it conducted a crackdown on the smugglers who are helping women get out, killing smugglers who were caught and effectively reducing the number of those who escape to a monthly average of 39.

"They register every slave, every person under their owner, and therefore if she escapes, every Daesh control or checkpoint, or security force - they know that this girl ... has escaped from this owner," Mirza Danai, founder of the German-Iraqi aid group Luftbrucke Irak, told the AP.

In May, another report surfaced that ISIS was selling sex slaves on Facebook. The post showed a photo of a young girl with the caption: "To all the bros thinking about buying a slave, this one is $8,000," The Washington Post reported.

Although the terror group has previously used social media to sell sex slaves, that was the first time it uploaded an actual photo of the girl it was selling. Facebook quickly took down the photo.

Last month, the United Nations declared that ISIS is "committing genocide against the Yazidis."

"ISIS has sought to erase the Yazidis through killings; sexual slavery, enslavement, torture and inhuman and degrading treatment and forcible transfer causing serious bodily and mental harm," the report said.

The report also said that ISIS has publicly acknowledged it is attacking the Yazidis and is seeking to eliminate them because of their faith.