Shia, Kurdish forces move against IS

Shia militias and Kurdish forces are continuing their advance against Islamic State militants after breaking the siege of Amerli in northern Iraq. A team of journalists entered the northern Iraqi town on Monday, finding residents who had endured more than two months under siege. The joint forces have also seized the militant stronghold of Suleiman Beg. Meanwhile Amnesty International says that it has uncovered new evidence that Islamic State have launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing northern Iraq. ‘The Islamic State (IS) is carrying out despicable crimes and has transformed rural areas of [the northern region of] Sinjar into blood-soaked killing fields in its brutal campaign to obliterate all trace of non-Arabs and non-Sunni Muslims,’ Amnesty’s Donatella Rovera said. The UN is sending a team to Iraq to investigate ‘acts of inhumanity on an unimaginable scale’. The Islamists have killed thousands of non-Sunni people, the majority of the victims are Shias and members of other minority communities, forcing more than a million to flee their homes, according to a news agency.