ISIS has started killing own fighters: Here is why

Cairo, Apr 21: Cash-strapped Islamic State terror group has been killing its injured fighters so that their organs can be extracted and sold on the black market abroad, according to media reports.

"Doctors were threatened to take out the body organs of a wounded ISIL militant," the Arabic-language al-Sabah newspaper reported citing an unnamed source in the Iraqi city of Mosul.

The terrorists are suffering a budget shortage after their recent loss of territory in the Southern part of Mosul and for the same reason it is reportedly killing its own militants who have been injured in southern Mosul to take out their body organs such as hearts and kidneys to sell them in the black market, the Iranian FARS news agency reported.

It also cited Spanish daily El Mondo as saying that faced with an increased number of wounded members in the Syrian army and popular forces' attacks, the ISIS is using the body organs of its captives for transplantation.

According to the daily, the ISIS also forces the prisoners in Mosul jails to donate blood and postpones the execution of those sentenced to death to use their blood as much as possible.

Medical sources were quoted as saying that the personnel in one of hospitals in Mosul have seen corpses of at least 183 people whose organs had been taken out of their bodies.

Iraqi Ambassador to the United Nations Mohamed Alhakim had made the similar accusations last year, saying that the ISIS is trafficking human organs and has executed a dozen doctors for failing to go along with the programme.

Alhakim based his claim on the discovery of dozens of bodies left in shallow mass graves near the city of Mosul, currently an ISIS stronghold. The media reports come just days after it emerged that the Islamic State's income has plummeted by a whopping 30 per cent to USD 56 million since last year.

Significant territory losses means the number of people living in the Jihadi caliphate slumped from nine million at the start of 2015 to fewer than six million, according to the tax report by the US-based consultancy firm IHS.

PTI