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Thirty-six Islamic State fighters have been executed in Iraq for the notorious massacre of 1,700 soldiers.

The Iraqi president approved the mass hanging despite protests from human rights groups.

Some of the soldiers in Camp Speicher survived the onslaught on 12 June 2014 and told horror stories of how their colleagues were rounded up for slaughter.

During the horrifying killing, ISIS militants packed hundreds of men into trucks and told them they would be returned to their families – but instead they were taken to a nearby riverbank, lined up and mercilessly shot at close range.

Photos from the scene showed masked ISIS fighters tying up the cadets and firing at them as they lay down in mass graves in the desert.

(Image: Reuters)

Thirty-six of the 40 militants convicted of the killing in Camp Speicher in Tikrit were killed this morning in prison, Iraqi authorities confirmed.

A government spokesperson told AFP: "The executions of 36 convicted over the Speicher crime were carried out this morning in Nasiriyah prison."

President Fuad Masum approved the executions after video from the massacre emerged showing detailed evidence of the men involved.

But human rights groups claim the case against the defendants relied on confessions extracted under torture and their lawyer failed to properly challenge the evidence during two separate trials.

(Image: Reuters)

The UN also expressed concern last month over Iraq's attempt to speed up the appeal process for people on death row, saying "fast-tracking executions will only accelerate injustice:".

But victims of the 1,700 slaughtered in June 2014 – when the army students were divided by sect and murdered if judged to be Shia Muslims – praised President Masum's decision.

Majid Ameen, the dad of one of the military pupils killed, told the Times: "We are pleased with the president's decision."

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Propaganda videos released at the time showed hundreds men in plain clothes crying for mercy and cowering on the back of a truck before being executed with machine guns.

ISIS has been in retreat in recent months as Iraqi and Kurdish forces move in on the jihadis with the help of US air power.

ISIS is desperately clinging on to the areas it still controls in Iraq and Syria.