By Yochanan Visser – Western Journalism –
With Kurdish and Iraqi forces slowly closing in on the city of Mosul in Iraq and after the unexpected rapid victory by the Free Syrian Army and American Special Forces over the Islamic State in the “apocalyptic battle” for Dabiq, Syria, all hell is breaking lose in the ISIS’ rapidly shrinking caliphate.
While the mainstream media focused on the Islamic State’s latest attempt to commit genocide when the Jihadist group set fire to a sulfur factory south of Mosul this weekend, the British news site Sunday Express reported what could be the Islamic State’s most horrific atrocity to date.
As the Islamic State began to massacre hundreds of Iraqi boys and men in the Mosul area, the Iraqi army was also found torturing children.
The fire at the sulfur plant, meant to slow the offensive by the Iraqi army, created a toxic cloud that affected hundreds of civilians.
The smoke, mixed with choking black fumes from burning oil wells that were set fire by ISIS weeks ago, caused breathing difficulties and burned the eyes and throats of people in the surrounding areas.
The noxious sulfur cloud also threatened a nearby base with U.S. Special Forces who are assisting the Iraqi army in the offensive that aims to drive the Islamic State out of Mosul. The American soldiers were forced to put on gas masks as a precaution.
On Sunday, media reported that ISIS was rounding up hundreds of Iraqi men and boys in villages surrounding Mosul.
CNN reported that 284 of them were executed and dumped in a mass grave by a bulldozer near the College of Agriculture in Mosul.
“We are gravely worried by reports that Isil (ISIS) is using civilians in and around Mosul as human shields as the Iraqi forces advance, keeping civilians close to their offices or places where fighters are located, which may result in civilian casualties,” Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights told reporters.
The UN could not confirm the story about the mass murder of the 284 Iraqi civilians, but said that 550 families from the Samalia and the Najafia villages near Mosul have disappeared after they were forced to walk to Mosul earlier this weekend.
Of those involved in the battle for Mosul, the Islamic State is not the only group committing atrocities.
The U.S.-backed Iraqi army was caught on video torturing children in the Mosul region.
During the interrogation of a boy who did not appear older than 8-years-old, Iraqi soldiers beat him with hammers because they didn’t like his answer to their question of whether he was affiliated with ISIS.
The Mirror in England published video /images of the torture which showed the boy lying on the ground screaming and sobbing in pain as Iraqi soldiers beat his legs with hammers.
This war crime involving children paled in comparison to a report from Sunday Express in Great Britain on a new horrific atrocity by ISIS that involved 250 Christian and Alawite children in Syria.
The British news site published a video-taped testimony by a Christian Syrian woman who reported that the Islamic State had kidnapped 300 mostly Christian girls who were brought to a bakery in Douma, a city located 6 miles from Damascus.
The woman told Dr. Yvette Isaac, from advocacy charity Roads to Success, that the people working in the bakery were burned alive in the oven and that ISIS murdered 250 girls by putting them in an industrial dough kneader.
The youngest child murdered in this way was no older than 4-years-old, according to the woman identified as Alice Assaf.
The rest of the children were beheaded in front of their parents after being tortured, the woman told Dr. Isaac.
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Horrific ISIS Atrocity Of Christian Children As All Hell Breaks Loose In The Shrinking Caliphate