ISIS executed 741 civilians during Mosul battle: UN

The Islamic State group executed 741 civilians in the battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul, the UN said today, accusing the jihadists of perpetrating "international crimes" during the nine-month military campaign.

A total of 2,521 civilians were killed, mostly by IS attacks, during the fight between IS and the internationally- backed Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) that ended in July, the UN rights office said in a report.

"Those responsible must answer for their heinous crimes", the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, said in a statement.

Mosul, Iraq's second city, was captured by IS in 2014 and became the capital of the group's self-styled "caliphate" in the country.

Following IS's defeat in the city, the rights office said it had compiled witness testimony documenting "mass abductions of civilians, the use of thousands as human shields, the intentional shelling of civilian residences, and indiscriminate targeting of civilians trying to flee the city".

More than 800,000 people were displaced by the fighting, the report said.

The rights office also called for investigations into alleged violations committed by the ISF and their allies, including militia groups.

The report "recorded 461 civilian deaths as a result of airstrikes during the most intensive phase of the ISF-led offensive from 19 February", the UN said in a statement, noting that it was impossible to establish responsibility for the strikes "in almost all cases".
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UN urges Australia to stop detaining refugees, shut detention centres

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Monday urged Australia to stop detaining refugees and close down its offshore detention centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

"Four years on, more than 2,000 people are still languishing in unacceptable circumstances. Families have been separated and many have suffered physical and psychological harm," UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said in a statement.

According to the statement, around 2,500 refugees and asylum-seekers have been forcibly transferred by Australia for offshore processing of their applications in Papua New Guinea and Nauru since the introduction of the current policy in 2013.

Of these, some 1,100 remain in Nauru and 900 in Papua New Guinea, added the statement.

The statement adds that the Australian government informed the UNHCR it will not accept refugees on its territory and offered the options of either letting them be where they are, or transferring them to Cambodia, with whom it signed an agreement in 2014, or the US, with whom it signed an agreement in 2016, to transfer some of the refugees detained in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

"To avoid prolonging their ordeal, UNHCR has no other choice but to endorse the relocation of all refugees on Papua New Guinea and Nauru to the US, even those with close family members in Australia," the UN High Commissioner said in his statement.

Many of the refugees in these offshore centres have fled strife-torn countries such as Afghanistan, Darfur, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria, and others have escaped discrimination or status as stateless persons such as the Rohingya minorities from Myanmar.
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