The Islamic State terror group released new video on Sunday of its June 2014 massacre of hundreds of mostly Shiite military recruits in Tikrit, Iraq.
Experts believe that ISIS gunmen captured 1,700 cadets at the Speicher military base near Tikrit and then executed the young soldiers at various locations around the presidential palace complex.
The 22-minute video was posted on islamic extremist web forums and included both new and previously released footage of the atrocities. It depicts hundreds of executions, providing further evidence of the war crimes committed by the group.
The industrial scale executions shown in the video are reminiscent of the Nazi regime, with victims shown falling out of dump trucks and then lying side by side in shallow mass graves while awaiting their turn to be shot.
The killings were a lengthy process that went into the night, requiring an excavator to be used to move the piles of bodies.
Thus far approximately 600 bodies have been exhumed in Tikrit since government and allied fighters retook the city in April but many of the victims were simply dumped into the Tigris river.
An unidentified ISIS leader in a military-style uniform can be seen on the video saying “This is a message I address to the whole world and especially to the Rafidha dogs, I tell them we are coming,” he said, using a derogatory term for Shiite Muslims.
The video comes four days after a court in Baghdad sentenced 24 ISIS officers to death by hanging for their involvement in the Speicher massacre.
The Speicher massacre played a pivotal role in the mass recruitment of Shiite volunteers to take up arms against ISIS and help government forces notch key victories against the violent extremists.
The new evidence also shows the scope of the war crimes committed by the terror network and raises the pressure on the international community to properly address the issue using a concerted military response. The Obama administration has openly admitted to not having a policy in place to deal with ISIS though it has increased air strikes against the terror group since early last week.
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