150 Iraqi Sunnis killed by IS found in mass grave near Ramadi

The bodies of 150 members of an Iraqi Sunni tribe opposed to Islamic State (IS) have reportedly been found in a mass grave. The Reuters news agency quoted a security official saying 150 men from the Albu Nimr tribe had been taken from their villages near Ramadi on Wednesday night and then killed. There are claims of a separate incident in which 70 more members of the Albu Nimr tribe were found dead in another mass grave near the city of Hit. Those killed near Hit are believed to have been members of the police and an anti-IS militia called Sahwa, or Awakening.

Early this morning we found those corpses and we have been told by some Islamic State militants that ‘those people are from Sahwa, who fought your brothers the Islamic State, and this is the punishment of anybody fighting Islamic State’.

Eye witness in Ramadi

Meanwhile, the first group of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters entered the besieged Syrian town of Kobani on Thursday to help push back IS fighters who have defied U.S. air strikes and threatened to massacre its Kurdish defenders. Kobani, on the border with Turkey, has been encircled by the Sunni Muslim insurgents for more than 40 days. Weeks of U.S.-led air strikes have failed to break their stranglehold, and Kurds are hoping the arrival of the peshmerga will turn the tide. The siege of Kobani - known in Arabic as Ayn al-Arab - has become a test of the U.S.-led coalition’s ability to stop Islamic State’s advance, and Washington has welcomed the peshmerga’s deployment.

Middle East mass grave