The villagers lowered 15 bodies into a mass grave here Monday. Two of the dead were young girls. The rest were men. All had been executed at point-blank range by al-Qaeda-inspired rebels and their allies, during what witnesses say was an attack aimed at destroying four Shiite Turkmen communities.
The accounts are among the first to emerge from the villages south of Kirkuk, where residents say a massacre was carried out last week by Sunni fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and people who live in nearby Sunni communities.
Human rights groups have expressed horror at a rising tide of sectarian violence in Iraq, including reports from ISIS-controlled areas of beheadings and executions of Shiite religious leaders, civilians and captured security forces. But the residents of the string of Shiite Turkmen villages provided some of the most detailed firsthand accounts of the insurgents’ brutality since ISIS fighters seized control of the northern city of Mosul two weeks ago.
Since then, the insurgents have swept toward the south and west, driving to create a Sunni Muslim nation, governed by Islamic law, stretching across Iraq and Syria. Among those caught in the crosshairs are Iraq’s Turkmens, a minority in this mostly Arab nation, speaking a language that derives from Turkish. While some are Sunni, others are Shiite Muslims — considered apostates by ISIS.
It is not yet clear how many people were killed in the attack on the four farming villages. Gen. Turhan Abdel-Rahman, Kirkuk’s deputy police chief, said he knew of at least 40 slain residents — 25 from three villages who were buried Sunday, plus the 15 interred Monday, who were from the fourth town, Bashir. “There are other bodies still inside Bashir,” he said.
Scores of people are missing, said more than a dozen residents who spoke to The Washington Post on Monday. Thousands have fled to nearby Shiite communities. The Associated Press first reported on the attack and the expulsions.
