Lebanese Sunni gunmen during the Sept. 3 funeral procession of Sgt. Ali Sayid, who was beheaded by Islamic militants. AP/Hussein Malla The Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) group conducted a mass execution of women in Fallujah, according to a statement issued by the Iraqi government.

The Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights announced Tuesday that a man identified as Abu Anas al-Libi had killed more than 150 women and girls in Iraq's Fallujah, some of whom were pregnant.



"The women were executed because they refused to accept the policy of Jihad al-Nikah [sexual jihad] that ISIS is enforcing in Fallujah," the ministry's statement added.

ISIS has carried out "wide-ranging massacres" in the Anbar province's Fallujah, the ministry also said, specifying that the jihadist group has been burying the dead in two mass graves in the city's Hayy al-Jolan neighborhood as well as the suburb of Al-Saqlawiyyah.

According to the report, ISIS has also turned the city’s Al-Hadra al-Mohammadiyyah mosque into a large prison where hundreds of men and women are being held.

There was no independent confirmation of the Iraqi ministry’s report.

Jihad al-Nikah

Jihad al-Nikah, or the controversial practice of women serving as consorts to jihadist fighters, first came to media attention during the Syrian civil war.

In late 2013, Tunisia's Interior Ministry said numerous women from the country had traveled to Syria for Jihad al-Nikah, however subsequent media reports played down the claims.

As ISIS pressed its lightning advances in Iraq in this summer, reports began to emerge of the jihadist group's mass abuse of women.

The Egyptian daily Al-Masry al-Yawm reported in June that ISIS had distributed notices in Mosul calling on women to submit to Jihad al-Nikah.

Although this specific report was never confirmed, a UN human rights spokesperson said four women in Mosul "were believed to have committed suicide after being raped by insurgents or forced into marriages with them."

ISIS in October announced in its Dabiq journal that it had enslaved Yazidi women, boasting it was the "first [enslavement] since the abandonment of sharia law."

"After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the Sharia among the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations, after one-fifth of the slaves were transferred to the Islamic State's authority to be divided as khums," the journal said.

Videos have since emerged of ISIS bartering Yazidi slave women on markets, and the group in December issued a follow-up flyer that discussed the specifics of how to take women captive and treat them.