The cover page of Amnesty International's new report on the Islamic State terror group. Photo: Amnesty International.

JNS.org – The human rights group Amnesty International said in a new report that the Islamic State terror group has transformed northern Iraq into “blood-soaked killing fields” since conquering the region in June.

The report—titled “Ethnic cleansing on historic scale: the Islamic State’s systematic targeting of minorities in northern Iraq“—documents evidence of several mass killings that took place in Iraq’s Sinjar province, in the villages of Qiniyeh on Aug. 3 and Kocho on Aug. 15. The victims of the attacks were shot by Islamic State jihadists and buried in mass graves.

Amnesty International accused Islamic State of carrying out “war crimes, including mass summary killings and abductions” against ethnic and religious minorities such as Assyrian Christians, Turkmen Shi’a, Shabak Shi’a, Yazidis, Kakai, and Sabean Mandaeans.

“The massacres and abductions being carried out by the Islamic State provide harrowing new evidence that a wave of ethnic cleansing against minorities is sweeping across northern Iraq,” Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s senior crisis response adviser, said in a statement.

“The Islamic State is carrying out despicable crimes and has transformed rural areas of Sinjar into blood-soaked killing fields in its brutal campaign to obliterate all trace of non-Arabs and non-Sunni Muslims,” added Rovera.