UN official calls for action to counteract Islamic State

Jordanian prince says war zone a 'slaughterhouse'

The Jordanian prince taking the helm of the UN's human rights office urged the world on Monday to set as its first priority bringing a halt to the gruesome and conjoined conflicts in Iraq and Syria.

Newly appointed UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid al-Hussein, in his first speech to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, described Syria as a bloodbath. He said the Islamic State group, formed from the civil war's chaos, was an unprecedented force of violence against ethnic and religious groups.

"This ancient civilization has devolved into a slaughterhouse, where children are tortured in front of their parents or executed in public, amid wanton killing and destruction," Zeid told the 47-nation council.

He said the Islamic State group, which has seized huge areas of land along the Syria-Iraq borders, has shown an "absolute and deliberate disregard for human rights. The scale of its use of brute violence against ethnic and religious groups is unprecedented."

The veteran diplomat and campaigner for international justice also told the UN Human Rights Council on Monday that at least 3,000 people were killed since mid-April in Ukraine.

Zeid, who is the first UN human rights chief from the Muslim and Arab worlds, began his four-year post on Sept 1. He previously served as Jordan's UN ambassador and ran for secretary-general before Ban Ki-moon was chosen for the job.

Widening campaign

US warplanes carried out five strikes on Islamic State insurgents menacing Iraq's Haditha Dam on Sunday, witnesses and officials said, widening what US President Barack Obama called a campaign to curb and ultimately defeat the jihadist movement.

Obama has branded Islamic State an acute threat to the West as well as the Middle East and said that key NATO allies stood ready to back Washington in action against the well-armed sectarian force, which has seized expanses of northern Iraq and eastern Syria and declared a border-blurring religious caliphate.

The leader of a pro-Iraqi government paramilitary force in western Iraq said the airstrikes wiped out an Islamic State patrol trying to attack the dam - Iraq's second-biggest hydroelectric facility that also provides millions with water.

(The airstrikes) "were very accurate. There was no collateral damage. ... If Islamic State had gained control of the dam, many areas of Iraq would have been seriously threatened, even Baghdad," the capital, Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha told Reuters.

The aerial assault drove Islamic State fighters away from the dam, according to a police intelligence officer in the vast western province of Anbar, a hotbed of Islamist insurgency.

The US military said in a statement that the strikes destroyed four Islamic State Humvees and four of its armed vehicles, two of which were carrying anti-aircraft artillery; an Islamic State fighting position; one command post; and a defensive fighting position. All aircraft left the strike areas safely, the Pentagon said.

The strikes were Washington's first reported offensive into Anbar since it started attacks on Islamic State forces in the north of Iraq in August.

Almost three years after US troops withdrew from Iraq and 11 years after their invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, the war on Islamic State is drawing Washington back into the middle of Iraq's power struggles and bloody sectarian strife.

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the strikes on the Sunni Muslim insurgents had been carried out at the request of the Shiite Muslim-led central government in Baghdad.

AP - Reuters