ISIS Tortures, Kills 17 Family Members, Including Disabled Daughter, 3-Y-O Boy
Islamic State terror group soldiers have reportedly tortured and killed 17 members of a large family in Mosul, Iraq, the distraught mother who survived the attack said.
The woman, who wasn't identified, told local news channel AlMawsleya TV that IS radicals ordered the members of the family to leave their house and wait in line one by one, after which they killed them all.
"We didn't realize and, all of a sudden, a bomb exploded on my family, killing all of them – 17 people from my family were gone," the woman said, with an English translation provided by Daily Star on Monday.
"May God protect their bodies. I want to know which bodies are which. I don't want anything else," she added. "My son is 3 years old and my daughter is disabled. My older son, their father and his brothers, their grandmother, their spouses. I just want them."
The woman said that only she and her son survived the massacre.
"ISIS – the dogs...they tortured us. Just me and my son remained in the middle of all the bodies," she described.
IS is currently trying to keep a hold of Mosul, its last remaining stronghold in Iraq, which has resulted in several reports of carnage and sadistic murders.
The Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights agency reported in March that the radicals have kidnapped as many as 197 children, whom they are planning to use as human shields in order to protect themselves from U.S.-led coalition air strikes.
The Clarion Project released video footage of an IS fighter dragging along a child victim in Mosul, providing video evidence of IS using live human shields.
The black and white 1-minute long video, which shows the jihadi and the young victim trying to cross a street and hide amid buildings in the city, was apparently taken from an Iraqi drone.
Another video uploaded to video-sharing site LiveLeak late in March appeared to show Iraqi soldiers rescuing a 7-year-old boy strapped with explosives, who was found among the crowds of Iraqis fleeing Mosul.
Reuters reported that Iraqi forces have been trying to help civilians evacuate the city, as they try to clear and secure the area, but militant snipers have been hampering the effort.
Close to 600,000 civilians still remain in the western sector of Mosul, the report said.
Defense Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasoo said at the time that Iraqi forces control close to 60 percent of the western parts of the city.
"It's the Old City now with small streets and it's a hard fight with civilians inside. We are trying to evacuate them. We are a few hundred meters from the mosque now, we are advancing on al-Nuri. We know it means a lot to Daesh," he added, using an alternate name for IS.