Amnesty International said militants of the Takfiri group ISIL have been carrying out “systematic ethnic cleansing” in northern Iraq.

Amnesty International said militants of the Takfiri group ISIL have been carrying out “systematic ethnic cleansing” in northern Iraq.

In a new briefing released on Tuesday, the human rights organization said fresh evidence indicates that members of (ISIL) have “launched a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in northern Iraq, carrying out war crimes, including mass summary killings and abductions, against ethnic and religious minorities.”

The London-based group cited “hair-raising” accounts from survivors of massacres, accusing the terrorists of “war crimes, including mass summary killings and abductions.”

“Survivors of massacres describe how dozens of men and boys in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq were rounded up by Islamic State fighters, bundled into pick-up trucks and taken to village outskirts to be massacred in groups or shot individually,” the briefing said.

“Hundreds, possibly thousands, of women and children, along with scores of men, from the Yezidi minority have also been abducted since the Islamic State took control of the area,” Amnesty added.

"The massacres and abductions being carried out by the Islamic State provide harrowing new evidence that a wave of ethnic cleansing against minorities is sweeping across northern Iraq,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis Response Adviser currently in northern in Iraq.