UN urges intl support as Iraq fights IS
26 Sep Japan News
The U.N. Security Council urged the international community to expand
support for the Iraqi government as it fights the Islamic State group
and its allies, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said there is a
role for nearly every country in the world including Iran.
The presidential statement approved by all 15 council members at a
meeting chaired by Kerry expressed “deep outrage” at the killing,
kidnapping, rape and torture carried out by the Islamic State group.
Some of those acts might constitute war crimes and crimes against
humanity, it said.
Kerry convened the council to show support for the new Iraqi
government in its efforts to combat the Islamic State group and to
mobilize the world against the extremists who control a large swath of
Syria and north and western Iraq. He did so a day after Congress
approved the Obama administration’s plan authorizing the U.S. military
to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels fighting Islamic State
militants.
“If left unchecked, these terrorists certainly would pose a growing
threat beyond the region because they have already promised it,” Kerry
told the meeting that brought more than two dozen ministers to U.N.
headquarters.
Nikolay Mladenov, the U.N.’s top envoy in Iraq, said the U.N.
estimates that since January there have been at least 25,000 civilian
casualties including at least 8,500 killed and more than 16,000 wounded.
Since the beginning of June, when Islamic State fighters swept across
the border into Iraq, he said at least 4,700 civilians have been killed
and some 6,500 wounded, he said.
Minority communities including Christians, Yezidis, Shabaks, Turkmen
and others have been targeted by Islamic State fighters deliberately
cleansing territories under their control, perpetrating crimes that may
also amount to genocide, Mladenov said.
“We are facing throat-cutters,” French Foreign Minister Laurent
Fabius said. “They rape, crucify and decapitate. They use cruelty as a
means of propaganda. Their aim is to erase borders and to eradicate the
rule of law and civil society.”
Fabius said the Islamic State fighters represent a challenge to the
international order and warned that in the future their targets will
extend way beyond Syria and Iraq.
Kerry said the group has no vision beyond the slaughter of those who
stand in its way.
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