Nineveh (IraqiNews.com) Islamic State snipers killed 15 children while they were attempting to flee towards locations taken over by Iraqi security forces in Mosul, according to a security source.

“ISIS snipers killed 15 kids belonging to Mosul refugees who were heading to security forces,” the source told Alsumaria News, but did not clarify the time frame for the alleged killings.

“ISIS gangs have used the most horrific means of killing with the migrating people of Mosul, targeting them with IEDs, sniping their children to prevent them from leaving town and using them as human shields,” the source said.

Iraqi government forces, backed by tribal militias and US-led aircrafts, have been successfully liberating several villages around Mosul as part of a wide-scale operation that launched mid October to retake the city from ISIS. The forces commanders, while claiming daily victories, admit that the existence of civilians in the city, many of whom are reportedly used as human shields, have slowed down the pace of operations. </s> 'Bodies of murdered Iraqis lay in streets' after ISIL shooting, an apparent bid to prevent civilians fleeing, UN says.

Fighters from the ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS) group have killed more than 160 people in one day last week to prevent them from fleeing western Mosul, according to the United Nations.

The agency on Tuesday accused ISIL of carrying out the attack in the group's last stronghold, where a coalition of troops is working to flush out the fighters.

"The brutality of Daesh [ISIL] and other terrorist groups seemingly knows no bounds," said Zeid bin Ra'ad al-Hussein, the UN's human rights chief.

"Yesterday, my staff reported to me that bodies of murdered Iraqi men, women and children still lay on the streets of the al-Shira neighbourhood of western Mosul, after at least 163 people were shot and killed by Daesh to prevent them from fleeing."

Hussein made the comments in his opening address to the UN Human Rights Council.

His spokesman, Rupert Colville, told the AFP news agency that the killings were believed to have taken place on June 1.

In late May, Iraqi forces launched a broad assault on parts of Mosul, closing in on the remaining pockets of territory held by ISIL.

Aid groups had expressed their concerns over the safety of hundreds of thousands of civilians at risk of being caught in the crossfire.

On Monday, UNICEF warned that 100,000 children were still in ISIL-held areas, living under extremely dangerous conditions.

Peter Hawkins, UNICEF's representative in Iraq, said the agency is receiving "alarming reports" of civilians being killed, including children, with some caught in the crossfire while trying to flee.

Separately, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Monday that at least 26 bodies of "blindfolded and handcuffed" men were found in government-controlled areas and around the city since the operation started.

READ MORE: UN envoy: Liberation of Mosul from ISIL is 'imminent'

Local armed forces told foreign journalists that 15 men were extrajudicially killed by government forces who were holding them on suspicion of being affiliated with ISIL, the rights group said.

HRW said that in the remaining cases reported by local and international sources, the sites of the apparent executions - all in government-held territory - raise concerns about government responsibility for the killings.

Last month, Stephen O'Brien, the UN under-secretary for humanitarian affairs, said the organisation had "deep concern" for hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped behind ISIL lines.

"Although the UN is not present in the areas where fighting is occurring, we have received very disturbing reports of families being shut inside booby-trapped homes and of children being deliberately targeted by snipers," O'Brien said.

ISIL overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by US-led air raids have since regained much of the territory they lost to the group.

Iraqi forces launched a major operation to retake Mosul in October last year, fighting their way to the city and retaking its eastern side before setting their sights on its smaller but more densely populated west.

The eastern half of Mosul was declared liberated in January and the push for the city's western section, separated from the east by the Tigris River, began the following month.

Almost 10,000 people fled from Mosul's northwest and the Old City every day last week, according to UN estimates.

More than 750,000 people have been displaced from the city since October. </s> At least eight people were killed, and six were wounded in recent violence:

Three Turkish soldiers were killed and another was wounded in a cross border attack. Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.) guerrillas launched a mortar attack from inside Iraqi territory that killed the soldiers who were nearby in Turkey’a Hakkari province.

Militants killed the son of the village mukhtar in Latifiya.

In Jabal al-Shoor, security personnel killed an ISIS official.
• ISIS Executes Kurdish Intelligence Agent; Three Killed in Iraq – May 2nd, 2019
• In Iraq, 245 Killed or Found Dead During April – April 30th, 2019 </s> At least 1,970 were killed, executed, or found dead; and 194 more were wounded in recent violence. During March, at least 826 people were killed or found dead, and 286 were wounded. The higher fatalities figure is mostly due to the discovery of hundreds of corpses in the rubble of Mosul.

The analysis is as follows: At least 222 civilians, 277 security personnel, 458 militants, 49 PKK guerrillas, and one Turkish soldier were killed or found dead. Iraq also executed 13 people. Of these fatalities 1,444 were found in mass graves or extracted from the rubble of Mosul, leaving 526 people killed during the month of April. Security operations launched by Iraqi forces on Islamic State targets near the border in Syria accounted for 37 of the deaths. Of course, the deaths of the Kurdistan Workers Party (P.K.K.) guerrillas and the Turkish soldier are from that conflict spilling over the border from Turkey.

At least 138 civilians, 50 security personnel, three militants, and three Turkish soldiers were wounded. Also, hundreds were sickened by water possibly tainted by unburied corpses finding their way into rivers in the Mosul region.

At least four people were killed, and three were wounded in recent violence:

Two people were killed in Dibs when leftover explosives were detonated.

A bomb at a shop in Baquba killed the owner.

An off-duty border guard died in a landmine explosion in Choman near the Iranian border.

In other news: The U.S.-led Coalition fighting the Islamic State militants deactivated the Combined Joint Forces Land Component Command, which oversaw ground operations in Iraq and Syria. Although its authority was transferred to the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, the closure represents the end of ground operations.
• Ten Foreign ISIS Wives Given Death Sentences; 10 Others Killed in Iraq – April 29th, 2018
• Five Foreign Women Condemned to Death in Iraqi Court; Four Killed in Iraq – April 26th, 2018 </s> Columbia: A Pentagon investigation has concluded that at least 105 civilians died in an anti-IS strike in the Iraqi city of Mosul in March, officials said Thursday, but they blamed the toll on a secondary explosion of jihadist munitions.

A US aircraft delivered a single precision-guided bomb into a building in west Mosul on March 17, with the aim of killing a pair of snipers on the second story of the structure in the al-Jadida neighborhood, which at the time was under Islamic State control.

But the bomb also caused a large cache of IS explosives to detonate, leading to the catastrophic collapse of the building that had civilians sheltering downstairs, officials said.

"The secondary explosion triggered a rapid failure of the structure which killed the two ISIS snipers, 101 civilians sheltered in the bottom floors of the structure and four civilians in the neighboring structure to the west," said US Air Force Brigadier General Matt Isler, the lead investigator.

Isler said another 36 civilians who are "believed to be connected" to the building remained unaccounted for, but they had likely fled the area shortly before the strike. He said he was "very confident" in the final toll.

It was the single deadliest incident for civilians stemming from a coalition strike since anti-IS operations in Iraq and Syria began nearly three years ago. 

 The United States had previously only acknowledged that it "probably" had a role in the civilian deaths.

The investigation comes amid broader claims that US forces under President Donald Trump are killing more civilians as the military fulfills a plan to "annihilate" the Islamic State group.

The Pentagon denies this and says its rules of engagement remain unchanged and insists its precision-targeting abilities are the best in the world.

Officials say the US takes every precaution to avoid hitting civilians, including by aborting missile strikes at the last moment if a civilian unexpectedly wanders into the target zone.

"Our condolences go out to all those that were affected," said Major General Joe Martin.

"The coalition takes every feasible measure to protect civilians from harm. The best way to protect civilians is to defeat ISIS."

No condolence payments have been made, Isler said, though such a move has not been ruled out.

According to Isler, Iraqi counterterrorism service (CTS) troops had been moving into the al-Jadida neighborhood in west Mosul when they came under fire from the IS snipers.

Mosul was a former IS bastion but the jihadists now only control about 10 percent of the city.

Bad weather had kept surveillance drones from gathering video of the area for two days, and CTS and coalition forces -- not knowing civilians were in the building -- ultimately called in a strike, Isler said.

The precision-guided bomb selected -- a GBU-38 carrying 192 pounds of explosives -- was rigged to cause only localized damage to the building, but it ignited a large amount of ordnance which, unbeknownst to the coalition, IS fighters had previously placed inside.

"Post-blast analysis detected residues common to explosives used by ISIS, but not consistent with the explosive content of a GBU-38 munition," Central Command said in a statement.

"Engineering and weapons analysis indicates that the GBU-38 should have resulted in no more than 16-20 percent damage to the structure, localized to the front of the second floor."

Officials said IS may have deliberately rigged the building to explode and then used the snipers to intentionally provoke an air strike.

As of the most recent Centcom official tally, at least 352 civilians had been killed since the beginning of the bombing campaign against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria nearly three years ago.

Airwars, a London-based collective of journalists and researchers that tracks civilian deaths in Iraq and Syria, claims a minimum of 3,350 people have died in coalition strikes. </s> (IraqiNews.com) Nineveh – Iraqi media outlets reported on Saturday, that the Islamic State group executed 284 persons, including children in the city of Mosul over the past two days.

Al Sumaria News stated, “The victims were killed by firing squad at the Faculty of Agriculture north of the city of Mosul, where they were brought to the site on three consecutive batches,” adding that, “After the execution the bodies were transferred by bulldozers to mass graves at the same area.”

“Nearly 150 of these victims were executed after sunset on Thursday,” Al Sumaria added. “61 victims did not exceed the age of 14 years, and the dead were residents of villages and towns located to the northwest of Mosul, including al-Zawiya town,” Al Sumaria explained.

The ISIS is trying to strengthen its grip on Mosul, while the joint security forces, backed by the Army Aviation and the international coalition air force, continue advancing in the battle to liberate Mosul from the grip of ISIS. </s> At least 24 people were killed, and 13 were wounded in recent violence:

South of Dujail in 14th Ramadan village, gunmen killed 16 people and wounded four more at three different homes, which belonged to sons of Judge Rahim al-Marzouq. Most of the victims were women and children. It is unclear if this is the same attack as the one reported in Tarmiya, several miles south of Dujail. Reports of casualties have varied wildly, but another 20 casualties were reported there on Monday. There also were reports that Islamic State militants may have held the town.

A bomb targeting police at a Mosul train station killed two policemen and wounded five more. Four dumped bodies were found at another location.

A policeman was killed and two were wounded when a pair of bombs exploded in Mukhisa, near Baquba.

Two people were wounded by a bomb blast in Tarmiya.
• 526 Killed in Iraq or in Iraqi Operations near the Syrian Border During April; 1,444 Found in Mass Graves – April 30th, 2018
• Ten Foreign ISIS Wives Given Death Sentences; 10 Others Killed in Iraq – April 29th, 2018
• Five Foreign Women Condemned to Death in Iraqi Court; Four Killed in Iraq – April 26th, 2018 </s> Those who have been executed included civilians who have refused to comply with the relocation orders and 190 former Iraqi Security Forces officers.

Islamic State group fighters slaughtered at least 232 people in and around Mosul this week as Iraqi troops advanced on the city, the U.N. rights office said Friday.

"Last Wednesday, 232 civilians were reportedly shot to death. Of these there were 190 former Iraqi Security Forces officers," rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva.

"These reports have been corroborated to the extent possible," she added, stressing that the number of people killed in recent days could be higher.

Ms. Shamdasani said the execution-style killings came as IS was pushing forward with its strategy of forcing people living near the northern Iraqi city into Mosul, the group's last bastion in Iraq.

The rights office has said the jihadists aim to use these people as "human shields" in the ensuing battle for Mosul against US-backed elite Iraqi troops.

"ISIL has been forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes in some districts around Mosul," Ms. Shamdasani said .

Those who have been executed included civilians who have refused to comply with the relocation orders and those who previously worked for the government security services. </s> Belgian prosecutors have admitted a two-year-old Kurdish Iraqi girl was shot and killed by a police officer last week. It happened during a high-speed chase of a van carrying 26 refugees, including several children.

The case has highlighted the increasingly repressive Belgian immigration policy and pressure on police to intercept as many migrants as possible.

Al Jazeera's Jonah Hull spoke to the grieving family in an exclusive interview in Brussels.
At least 15 children are killed by ISIS snipers in Mosul.