UN: Iraq Christians were victims of Islamic State war crimes

By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A U.N. team says evidence it collected in Iraq strengthens preliminary findings that Islamic State extremists committed crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Christian community after it seized about a third of the country in 2014. The investigative team says in a report to the U.N. Security Council circulated Thursday that  the crimes included forcibly transferring and persecuting Christians, seizing their property and engaging in sexual violence, enslavement and other “inhumane acts” such as forced conversions and destruction of cultural and religious sites. The team also updates its investigations into the extremists’ use of chemical weapons.