ISIS fighters massacre civilians as Iraqi troops enter Mosul

(Image credit: Odd Andersen/Getty Images)

published 12 November 2016

As U.S.-supported Iraqi forces advance into Mosul, the last major city controlled by the Islamic State in Iraq, the surrounded militants have murdered dozens of trapped civilians, sometimes forcing children around age 12 to do the executions.

This fresh brutality is an ISIS attempt to show "they are still in business," said Ravina Shamdasani, a United Nations representative. Some 30 people were reportedly shot just for having cell phones, and the bodies of the dead are displayed in public as a warning to other civilians. Already some 48,000 refugees have fled Mosul to escape a similar fate.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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