ISIS burns alive 19 girls for refusing to have sex with terror members

CB Condez Wednesday, June 08, 2016

The Islamic State terror group reportedly burned to death 19 girls who had refused to sleep with its members.

An Islamic State flag hangs amid electric wires over a street in Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp, near the port-city of Sidon, southern Lebanon January 19, 2016. | REUTERS/Ali Hashisho

"They were punished for refusing to have sex with ISIS militants," local media activist Abdullah al-Malla told the ARA News.

According to the report, the 19 girls, all Yazidis, were taken hostage and were to be used as sex slaves. When they refused to do their captors' bidding, they were placed inside an iron cage and burned alive in front of hundreds of people. It reportedly happened on June 2 in central Mosul.

"The 19 girls were burned to death, while hundreds of people were watching," said a witness. "Nobody could do anything to save them from the brutal punishment."

KRG officials, according to Human Rights Watch, estimate around 1,800 girls to still be in the hands of ISIS in Syria and Iraq while Yazidi officials' estimates are around 3,500 as of October last year.

"The abuses against Yezidi women and girls documented by Human Rights Watch, including the practice of abducting women and girls and forcibly converting them to Islam and/or forcibly marrying them to ISIS members, may be part of a genocide against Yezidis," the group's report, published in April, reads.

According to the organization, the victims they were able to talk to said they were repeatedly bought and sold and were usually raped. They were, at times, locked up in rooms for days, were humiliated, and their children beaten or taken away.

"The longer they are held by ISIS, the more horrific life becomes for Yezidi women, bought and sold, brutally raped, their children torn from them," said Skye Wheeler, women's rights emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch.

The Yazidi region was taken over by ISIS in 2014, resulting to the displacement of as many as 400,000 people in Iraqi Kurdistan. ARA News reports that tens of thousands are still trapped in Mount Sinjar, with military sources telling of kidnappings, rape, and mass killings. Five or more mass graves have reportedly been discovered by Kurdish troops recently, where Yazidis are believed to have been summarily executed.