Rights group Amnesty International accused Islamic State (Isis) militants yesterday of carrying out a systematic campaign of “ethnic cleansing” in northern Iraq.

The organisation said that Isis had targeted religious minorities with illegal tactics including mass killings, abductions and other war crimes after overrunning parts of northern and western Iraq in June.

It said Isis fighters had expelled Christians, Shi’ites, Yazidis and others from their homes and had abducted “hundreds, if not thousands,” of women and children belonging to the ancient Yazidi faith.

And in several incidents reported by Amnesty, the extremists also rounded up and executed Yazidi men and boys.

A 26-page Amnesty report added to a growing body of evidence outlining the scope and extent of Islamic State’s crimes since it began its sweep from Syria across neighbouring Iraq in June.

Isis has since seized much of northern and western Iraq and have extended their influ

ence as far as the outskirts of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

The United Nations’s top human rights body approved a request by Iraq on Monday to open an investigation into the group’s crimes against civilians.

Its aim is to provide the human rights council with a report and evidence that will shed further light on atrocities and provide part of any eventual international war crimes prosecution.

“The massacres and abductions being carried out by Islamic State provide harrowing new evidence that a wave of ethnic cleansing against minorities is sweeping across northern Iraq,” said Amnesty investigator Donatella Rovera.

“The Islamic State has transformed rural areas of Sinjar into blood-soaked killing fields in its brutal campaign to obliterate all trace of non-Arabs and non-Sunni Muslims.”

Yazidi MP Mahma Khalil has called on the Iraqi government and international community to urgently help the Yazidis, who are still facing “continuing atrocities” by the extremist militants.

“They have been trying hard to force us to abandon our religion.

“We reject that because we are the oldest faith in Iraq that has roots in Mesopotamia,” Ms Khalil said.