Senior jihadist commander held woman captive for three months and subjected her to horrific abuse - until she had her revenge.

An Iraqi woman killed a senior ISIS commander who had been holding her captive and forcing her into sexual slavery for several months, according to reports in Iraqi and Kurdish media.

According to a senior Kurdish official, the woman - who some reports identified as a member of the Yazidi-Kurdish minority - killed the senior terrorist on Saturday in the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh, west of the ISIS-controlled city of Mosul.

In an interview with Arabic-language al-Sumaria TV, Kurdistan Democratic Party spokesman Saeed Mamouzini identified the ISIS commander as a jihadist known as "Abu Anas."

Mamouzini claimed Abu Anas was killed three months after forcing the woman to "marry" several men under his command - a reference to the temporary Islamic "marriages" enforced by ISIS on captive non-Muslims, which essentially amount to religiously-sanctioned rape.

According to ABNA news agency, the report surfaced just days after an unspecified number of "non-Iraqi" women were transported by ISIS into Mosul for use as sex slaves, under a direct order by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The jihadist group has utilized the systematic rape of female captives both as an "incentive" for its fighters as well as a way to terrorize its enemies and often even force their conversion to Islam as a way out.

There have been several reports of sex slaves being executed for refusing to comply, including an incident on August 15 in which 15 women were executed at the Ghazlani military base near Mosul, ABNA reported.

Iraqi government forces and Iranian-backed Shia militias have attempted to claw back the swathes of territory seized by ISIS, but have had only limited success. A much-vaunted operation to retake Iraq's second city of Mosul has yet to materialize, as anti-ISIS forces struggle to make any significant gains.