Islamic State commanders are liable for war crimes on a "massive scale" in northeast Syria, where they spread terror by beheading, stoning and shooting civilians and captured fighters, U.N. investigators said on Friday.
Their report, based on over 300 interviews with witnesses and victims, called on world powers to bring the commanders before the International Criminal Court for both war crimes and crimes against humanity.
"In carrying out mass killings of captured fighters and civilians following military assaults, ISIS (Islamic State) members have perpetrated egregious violations of binding international humanitarian law and the war crime of murder on a massive scale," said the report.
Foreign fighters have swollen the group's ranks and dominate its leadership structure, the report said. A separate U.N. report has said 15,000 foreigners have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq.
"The commanders of ISIS have acted willfully, perpetrating these war crimes ... They are individually criminally responsible," the report added, saying the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, wielded "absolute power".
Paulo Pinheiro, who chaired the U.N. panel, told a news conference that its findings would add to a secret list of war crimes suspects from all sides in Syria's civil war, in which some 200,000 have been killed since March 2011.
Since U.S.-led air strikes began targeting Islamic State in Syria in late September, its fighters have begun taking up positions in civilian houses and farms, leading to civilian casualties, the report said.
It found that Islamic State, also known as ISIS, was depriving 600,000 people in the north of deliveries of food and medical aid, and enforcing its radical interpretation of Islamic law through "morality police".
These ordered lashings and amputations for offenses such as smoking cigarettes or theft; one female dentist in Deir al-Zor had been beheaded for treating patients of both sexes.
"ISIS has beheaded, shot and stoned men, women and children in public spaces in towns and villages across northeastern Syria," the report said.
Children were being pressed to inform on their parents, women stoned for unapproved contact with men, and Christians, Kurds and other minorities forced to convert to Islam or pay a tax: "Witnesses saw scenes of still-bleeding bodies hanging from crosses, and of heads placed on spikes along park railings."
Among those slaughtered in Syria were 200 soldiers captured from the Tabqa airbase in Raqqa province, and hundreds of members of the al-Sheitat tribe in Deir al-Zor.
On Thursday, U.S. aircraft fired missiles at al-Qaeda militants in Syria for a third time as part of the international campaign against Islamic extremists, American officials and a Syrian activist said.
American defense officials said the strike took place Thursday and targeted the Khorasan group, which the U.S. says is a special cell within al-Qaeda's Syrian branch known as the Nusra Front plotting attacks against Western interests. The officials did not provide any details, and spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
Syrian activist Asaad Kanjo said the attack occurred near the town of Harem in Syria's northwestern Idlib province near the Turkish border. He said residents reported seeing a drone fire two missiles that struck a Nusra Front base, killing at least two people.
It was the third time the U.S. has bombed the Nusra Front since the American-led coalition began conducting airstrikes in Syria in September against the Islamic State group and other extremists. The U.S. military says the attacks that have hit the Nusra Front have only targeted the Khorasan group, and not hit the wider Nusra organization.
Inside Syria, however, activists and rebels dismiss the U.S. attempt to distinguish between the Khorasan group and Nusra, saying they are one entity. Many analysts also question the distinction.
The strikes against the Nusra Front have touched off a wave of criticism among many in Syria. While the group is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, among the Syrian opposition it has a degree of support and respect because its fighters are on the front lines alongside other rebels battling President Bashar Assad's forces in Syria's 3 -year civil war.
Many Syrians also say the strikes against Nusra are helping Assad by weakening one of his strongest opponents.
AP/REUTERS