United Nations: Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations asked the UN Security Council on Tuesday to look at allegations that Daesh is using organ harvesting as a way to finance its operations.

Ambassador Mohammad Al Hakim told reporters that in the past few weeks, bodies with surgical incisions and missing kidneys or other body parts have been found in shallow mass graves.

“We have bodies. Come and examine them,” he said. “It is clear they are missing certain parts.”

He also said a dozen doctors have been “executed” in Mosul for refusing to participate in organ harvesting.

Al Hakim briefed the council on the overall situation in Iraq and accused Daesh of “crimes of genocide”, in targeting certain ethnic groups.

The outgoing UN envoy to Iraq, Nikolay Mladenov, told the council that 790 people were killed in January alone by terrorism and armed conflict.

Mladenov noted the increasing number of reports and allegations that Daesh is using organ harvesting as a financing method, but he said only that “it’s very clear that the tactics Daesh is using expand by the day.”

He said Iraq’s most pressing goal is to win back the vast territory that Daesh has seized in the past year. The Sunni militants seized a third of both Iraq and neighbouring Syria and imposed strict Sharia.

“Especially worrying is the increasing number of reports of revenge attacks committed particularly against members of the Sunni community in areas liberated from Daesh control,” Mladenov said.