Islamic State insurgents in Iraq have carried out mass executions, abducted women and girls as sex slaves, and used child soldiers in what may amount to systematic war crimes, the UN said.

Sectarian violence continued to claim the lives of a large number of Iraqi civilians in Sunni Arab and Shiite neighbourhoods of Iraq’s capital, despite the coalition’s new Baghdad security plan, the UN said today.

HUMAN rights abuses in Iraq are as bad now as they were under Saddam Hussein, as lawlessness and sectarian violence sweep the country, the former UN human rights chief in Iraq said yesterday.