Iraq: ISIS Kidnaps Shia Turkmen, Destroys Shrines | Human Rights Watch

30.6.14

Iraq: ISIS Kidnaps Shia Turkmen, Destroys Shrines | Human Rights Watch: ISIS ordered all 950 Shia Turkmen families to leave the two adjacent farming villages of Guba and Shireekhan, according to nine displaced residents, two local activists, and local journalists. The displaced residents told Human Rights Watch they heard from the few remaining villagers, all Sunni, that ISIS had killed at least some of the kidnapped men, but none had seen bodies or could provide other confirmation. ISIS, an armed extremist Sunni group, remains in control of the two villages.

“This ISIS rampage is part of a long pattern of attacks by armed Sunni extremists on Turkmen and other minorities,” said Letta Tayler, senior terrorism and counterterrorism researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The killing, bombing, and pillaging threatens to displace entire communities, possibly forever.”

Guba and Shireekhan are 5 kilometers north of Mosul, which ISIS captured on June 10. ISIS controls large areas of north-central Iraq and neighboring Syria. In recent days, the group has sought to expand its control beyond Mosul, targeting nearby Shia communities of Turkmen and Shabaks, another religious minority. ISIS has stated that it considers Shia to be heretics and has frequently executed Iraqi and Syrian Shia on that basis, including en masse in Tikrit, a city it captured June 11.