There should be no question as to how horrific the Islamic State group is, and the recent find of yet another mass grave is further evidence of the kind of monsters we are up against.
DPA International reported:
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A mass grave of 100 headless bodies has been found south of Mosul in a town that was recently recaptured from Islamic State, the Iraqi Army said on Monday.
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The grave was found in the grounds of the agricultural college in Hammam al-Alil, 15 kilometres south of Mosul, according to a statement from the army’s military information office.
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State television said the victims appeared to have been killed recently and were likely to have been detainees who had been held and tortured by Islamic State.
Their decapitated bodies had been thrown into a rubbish pit, the broadcaster said.
The UN warned two weeks ago that Islamic State appeared to have killed dozens of civilians since the offensive against Mosul – the last major Iraqi urban centre held by the jihadists – was launched in mid-October.
Other mass graves have been found in areas that have been taken back from the control of the Islamic State group. In the Sinjar district, a mass grave included the bodies of members of the Yazidi religious minority that the radical Islamists slaughtered.
Around 1,700 Shiite soldiers were captured and killed after the Islamic State group ran roughshod throughout Iraq, and their bodies have been found in mass graves as well.
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The mass graves left in the wake of the murder and terror executed by dictator Saddam Hussein — before he was deposed in the U.S.-led 2003 invasion — have been evidenced over the years as well. According to DPA, “The military said specialist teams were being sent to examine the scene of the latest find.”
DPA reported:
Also on Monday, Kurdish forces Monday said they had captured the Islamic State-held town of Bashiqa north-east of Mosul, two weeks after they surrounded it and cut off its jihadist defenders.
Control of Bashiqa and a number of other areas around Mosul, where many Christians, Yezidis and other minority groups lived, was disputed between Baghdad and Erbil before Islamic State captured the region in 2014.
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Meanwhile, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said that the number of people displaced from Mosul district had risen to almost 34,000.
That was a 53-per-cent increase over the last 48 hours, the UN agency said.
In Washington, officials said Monday that the US has been working with the United Nations and international groups to ensure that food, shelter and relief supplies were in place.
The preparations include ready-to-eat meals for up to 1.25 million people. The United States, like the UN, is preparing for a worst-case-scenario of up to 700,000 people being displaced by the fighting in and around Mosul.
In these dangerous times it’s clear how critical it is to have strong leadership. President Obama has evidenced the kind of mess that occurs when the United States does not lead from strength and put America’s interests first.
If America isn’t strong, there’s no way we can even begin to try and defeat radical Islamic terrorists domestically or abroad — and that’s a frightening thought.
