UN diplomats examine Islamic state alleged crimes

Iraq's government asked the UN's top human rights body Monday to investigate alleged crimes against civilians committed by the Islamic State group in its rampage across northeastern Syria and northern and western Iraq. Diplomats were weighing the request at a daylong special session of the 47-nation Human Rights Council on Iraq and the extremist group. A draft resolution put forward by Iraq would set up a UN fact-finding mission to investigate alleged abuses by the group. The session Monday was focused on the threat posed by the Islamic State group, which has seized cities, towns and vast tracts of land and carried out a number of massacres and beheadings. Iraq's human rights minister, Mohammed Shia' Al Sudani, said his country needs the world's support because the Islamic State ‘is not an Iraqi phenomenon, it is a transnational organization that is an imminent danger for all countries of the world.’ ‘Their movement must be curbed. Their assets should be frozen and confiscated. Their military capacities must be destroyed,’ he said. Diplomats convened after the US launched a series of airstrikes to prevent the group from advancing on the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil and to help protect members of the Yazidi minority who were stranded in Iraq's northwest, according to AP.