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Warning: This article contains images and descriptions of extreme violence.
Islamic State militants drove 600 Shia, Christian, and Yazidi male prisoners into the middle of the desert, lined them up along the edge of a ravine, and executed them at point blank range, according to a report by Human Rights Watch released Thursday.
The inmates, taken from a local prison, were forced to count themselves as they lined up before members of the jihadist militant group opened fire on them with machine guns.
Human Rights Watch says it spoke to nine survivors of the massacre. They told the organization they made it out alive by rolling into the ravine and pretending to be dead, or were shielded by the bodies of other prisoners who fell on top of them.
ISISAgency France Presse confirms that these images were released by ISIS, and they appear to show a similar execution.
Militants from the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) separated the group from more than 1,500 prisoners along religious and ethnic lines.
A survivor recounts an ISIS leader as saying “the Sunnis must stand on one side. The Shia, Kurds, and Yazidis must stand on the other. If I find out that a Shia is among the Sunnis, I’m going to cut off his head with a sheet of metal.”
The moment they made us give up all of our possessions, I knew they were going to kill us.
The men were interrogated about their beliefs, names, hometowns, and other details — witnesses said about 100 Shia prisoners were successful at pretending to be Sunni to escape further violence.
The remaining Shia, Kurdish, Christian, and Yazidi prisoners were then searched.
“They took everything from us — money, watches, rings, identity cards,” one survivor said. “The moment they made us give up all of our possessions, I knew they were going to kill us.”
ISILThe Long War Journal reposted these images, released by ISIS, which it says show Iraqi soldiers being rounded up by the group.
The prisoners had been given no food or water for 24 hours, but ISIS militants promised them supplies as they drove them deeper into the desert. When they arrived, the militants told them “you’ll have water in paradise.”
The militants then made the men kneel in a single line along the rim of a curved ravine 6 to 12 feet deep. They were then asked to number themselves off, with each person forced to “raise his hand and say his number.”
Survivors said many of the gunmen were young. Some appeared nervous. Others were excited, including some who joked at the end of the count that they had “a nice-size herd,” and were “going to eat well tonight.”
After we said goodbye to each other, I took my daughter’s picture and kissed it, and I prayed to God to save me for her.
One survivor says that after the count, the militants decided that shooting was the most efficient way to exterminate the group.
“One put his knife to an inmate’s neck, planning to cut his throat, but the other guy said, ‘There are too many and we’re not enough, so let’s kill them with bullets.’ So he went to the first one and he fired several shots into his back. Then they opened fire on all of us.
