Iraqi secu­ri­ty forces and Shi­ite mili­tia are among the ground troops on whom we rely in our war against the Islam­ic State. Their bru­tal­i­ty rivals that of IS. [Cred­it: Reuters]

The men were led a few hun­dred yards to a field where Abu Omar said more than a hun­dred oth­ers had been gath­ered.  For about two hours, they were forced to kneel and stare at the ground as the fight­ers select­ed their tar­gets and led them to a spot behind a mud wall.

“They took them behind the wall. Less than a minute, then a gun­shot,” said Abu Omar. “All we could hear was the gun­shots. We could­n’t see.”

This atroc­i­ty, which claimed the lives of 72 unarmed peo­ple in a vil­lage in Iraq’s Diyala Province, was not car­ried out by the Islam­ic State (IS). It was per­pe­trat­ed by our allies in the war against IS — Iraqi secu­ri­ty forces and Shi­ite mili­tia. Con­tin­ue read­ing →