Apropos 'UN accuses Islamic State of executions, rape, child abuse in Iraq' carried by Business Recorder on July 19, the United Nations is said to have accused Islamic State fighters in Iraq of executing religious and other leaders as well as teachers and health workers, forcibly recruiting children and raping women among acts that amounted to war crimes.
A UN report has reportedly focused on a range of violations committed against civilians, particularly by the Islamic State, though it also said Iraqi forces and allied fighters had not taken precautions to protect civilians from violence. According to the report carried by the newspaper at least 5,576 Iraqi civilians have been killed this year in violence. That Iraq is in deep trouble is a fact that has found its best expression in the deaths of nearly 6,000 civilians in one year. The then US President George W. Bush and his key aides Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney must be tried by the international court for pushing the country towards an abyss of a civil war. Insofar as its invasion of Iraq in 2003 that led to the toppling of Saddam Husain is concerned, it will be considered a shameful blot on the free world and the American nation's core ideals.