GENEVA (Reuters) - An estimated 3,500 people, mainly women and children, are being held as slaves in Iraq by Islamic State militants, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The Islamist group, which also controls large parts of Syria, is responsible for acts that may "amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide", particularly against minorities, a report said.

Iraqi security forces and allied groups including Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have also killed and abducted civilians, it said. "Some of these incidents may have been reprisals against persons perceived to support or be associated with ISIL (Islamic State)," it added.

At least 18,802 civilians were killed in violence in Iraq from January 2014 to October 2015, and 36,245 civilians were wounded, the report said, calling the figures "obscene".

The U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq and the U.N. human rights office estimated that 3,500 people were "currently being held in slavery" by Islamic State, which seized mainly Sunni-populated areas in the north and west in 2014.

"Those being held are predominantly women and children and come primarily from the Yazidi community," said the joint report issued in Geneva, referring to a non-Muslim minority in northern Iraq viewed by Islamic State as devil-worshippers.

"But a number are also from other ethnic and religious minority communities."

The Sunni Islamists, who claim responsibility for suicide bombings in Baghdad against Shia mosques and markets, should face prosecution for international crimes, said Francesco Motta, director of the U.N. human rights office in Iraq.

"They use civilians as shields. They use children in armed conflict, they also directly target civilian infrastructure and that can amount to war crimes but they can also constitute crimes against humanity," he told a news briefing by telephone from Baghdad.

The group seeks to "basically eliminate, purge or destroy minority communities", Motta said.

"We've seen communities like the Yazidi in particular bear the brunt of this. Yazidi were basically given the option by ISIL to convert or to be killed.

"The intent seems clear ... the international crime of genocide," he added. "The intention was to destroy part or the whole of the Yazidi people."

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq witnessed a sharp increase in civilian deaths following the fall of large swaths of territory to the Islamic State group in the summer of 2014. Now despite a string of recent battlefield losses for IS, civilians in Iraq continue to die at a "staggering" rate, according to a new United Nations report.

At least 18,802 civilians were killed and another 36,245 were wounded in Iraq between the start of 2014 and Oct. 31 of last year, according to the U.N. report released Tuesday. In just one six-month period between May and October last year, more than 10,000 civilians were killed.

"Despite their steady losses to pro-government forces, the scourge of ISIL continues to kill, maim and displace Iraqi civilians in the thousands and to cause untold suffering," U.N. envoy Jan Kubis said in a statement, using an alternative acronym for the extremist group.

The numbers are nowhere near the death tolls recorded during Iraq's bloody civil war. In 2006 alone more than 34,000 civilians were killed, according to U.N. data.

The following year the Iraqi government refused to provide the U.N. with death toll statistics, stating that the government wanted to prevent the data from painting a negative image of the country. But civilian casualties since the rise of IS in Iraq are considerably higher than the preceding years of relative stability. In 2011, the number of civilian deaths due to violence was at its lowest since the civil war, with fewer than 2,800 killed.

U.N. human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein said the civilian death toll may actually be considerably higher.

"Even the obscene casualty figures fail to accurately reflect exactly how terribly civilians are suffering in Iraq," he said in a statement.

The U.N. report also documented a wide range of human rights abuses, including the IS group's conscription of some 3,500 people into slavery. Many of those are women and children from the Yazidi religious minority who were taken hostage in the summer of 2014 and forced into sexual slavery.

It said another 800 to 900 children were abducted from Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, for religious and military training. A number of IS child soldiers were killed by the extremists when they tried to flee fighting in the western Anbar province, it said.

"ISIL in particular has used the most gruesome methods to execute people by running bulldozers over them, by burning them alive. In one case, people were put in a cage and the cage was put into the water," Ravina Shamdasani, a UN spokeswoman told The Associated Press in Geneva.

Iraq forces evacuate hundreds of civilians near Ramadi (video)

The U.N. report called the civilian death toll in Iraq "staggering." It also detailed the various methods the IS group has employed to kill its enemies, including public beheadings and throwing them off buildings.

Such acts are "systematic and widespread ... abuses of international human rights law and humanitarian law," the report said. "These acts may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide."

After IS was pushed out of the majority Yezidi town of Sinjar a number of assumed burial sites that local officials have dubbed "mass graves" were found in the town.

"They are symbols of a nation, they are symbols of Kurdistan and they represent the victims of terror," said Mahmood Salih Hama Karim, the minister with the Kurdish Regional Government responsible for overseeing excavation of the sites.

Last month Iraqi forces also advanced against IS in the country's western province of Anbar, pushing the group out of the center of the city of Ramadi.

The U.S.-led coalition fighting IS announced this month that the militants had lost 30 percent of the territory they once held in Iraq and Syria.

Baghdad-based spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters the extremists have lost 40 percent of their territory in Iraq and 20 percent in Syria, adding that the group is in a "defensive crouch."

IS still controls large areas of Iraq and neighboring Syria after the group swept across Iraq's north and west in the summer of 2014. It has set up a self-styled caliphate in the territories under its control, which it governs with a harsh and violent interpretation of Islamic law.

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Associated Press writers Bram Janssen in Erbil, Iraq and Boris Heger in Geneva contributed to this report.

Soldiers hold their caps as a helicopter flies past during an operation, after a militant attack at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, Pakistan, January 20, 2016. REUTERS/Fayaz Aziz

By Mehreen Zahra-Malik and Jibran Ahmad

CHARSADDA, Pakistan/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Armed militants stormed a university in volatile northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 19 people and wounding dozens a little more than a year after the massacre of 134 students at a school in the area, officials said.

A senior Pakistani Taliban commander claimed responsibility for the assault in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province but an official spokesman later denied involvement, calling the attack "un-Islamic".

The violence nevertheless shows that militants retain the ability to launch attacks, despite a country-wide anti-terrorism crackdown and a military campaign against their strongholds along the lawless border with Afghanistan.

A security official said the death toll could rise to as high as 40 at Bacha Khan University in the city of Charsadda. The army said it had concluded operations to clear the campus six hours after the attack began and that four gunmen were dead.

A spokesman for rescue workers, Bilal Ahmad Faizi, said 19 bodies had been recovered including students, guards, policemen and at least one teacher, named by media as chemistry professor Syed Hamid Husain.

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A teacher (L) walks with a pair of crutches following her rescue after a group of militants stormed …

Many of the dead were apparently shot in the head execution-style, TV footage showed.

The militants, using the cover of thick, wintry fog, scaled the walls of the university on Wednesday morning before entering buildings and opening fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, police said.

Students told media they saw several young men wielding AK-47 guns storming the university housing where many students were sleeping.

"They came from behind and there was a big commotion," an unnamed male student told a news channel from a hospital bed in Charsadda's District Hospital. "We were told by teachers to leave immediately. Some people hid in bathrooms."

CONTRADICTING CLAIMS

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A military helicopter flies past a mosque during an operation after a militant attack at Bacha Khan …

The gunmen attacked as the university prepared to host a poetry recital on Wednesday afternoon to commemorate the death anniversary of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a popular ethnic Pashtun independence activist after whom the university is named.

Vice Chancellor Fazal Rahim told reporters that the university teaches over 3,000 students and was hosting an additional 600 visitors for the poetry recital.

Umar Mansoor, a senior Pakistani Taliban commander involved in the December 2014 attack on the army school in Peshawar, claimed responsibility for the Charsadda assault and said it involved four of his men.

He told Reuters by telephone the university was targeted because it was a government institution that supported the army.

However, later in the day, official Taliban spokesman Muhammad Khorasani issued a written statement disassociating the militants from attack, calling it un-Islamic.

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A rescue worker guides students, after they were rescued in a militant attack at Bacha Khan Universi …

"Youth who are studying in non-military institutions, we consider them as builders of the future nation and we consider their safety and protection our duty," the statement said.

The reason for the conflicting claims was not immediately clear. While the Taliban leadership is fractured, Mansoor is believed to remain loyal to central leader Mullah Fazlullah.

The Pakistani Taliban are fighting to topple the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law. They are loosely allied with the Afghan Taliban who ruled most of Afghanistan until they were toppled by a U.S.-backed military action in 2001.

By afternoon on Wednesday, the military said all four gunmen had been killed.

"The operation is over and the university has been cleared," Pakistan army spokesman General Asim Bajwa said.

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A student holding his books talks on a mobile phone, after he was rescued in a militant attack at Ba …

A security official close to the operation said he had seen the four gunmen's bodies riddled with bullets. He said none of the gunmen was wearing a suicide vest but carried guns and grenades.

RUMORS OF ATTACK

Television footage showed military vehicles packed with soldiers driving into the campus as helicopters buzzed overhead and ambulances lined up outside the main gate while anxious parents consoled each other.

Shabir Khan, a lecturer in the English department, said he was about to leave his university housing for the department when firing began.

"Most of the students and staff were in classes when the firing began," Khan said. "I have no idea about what's going on but I heard one security official talking on the phone to someone and said many people had been killed and injured."

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Relatives and friends surround a man injured in a militant attack at Bacha Khan University, at a hos …

Several schools had closed early at the weekend around Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, after rumors circulated of a possible attack.

The area has been on edge since the December 2014 massacre by six gunmen in Peshawar.

Pakistan, which has suffered from years of jihadist militant violence, has killed and arrested hundreds of suspected militants under a major crackdown launched afterwards.

The Peshawar school attack was seen as having hardened Pakistan's resolve to fight militants along its lawless border with Afghanistan.

"We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland," Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in a statement after Wednesday's attack.

(Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud. Writing by Tommy Wilkes and Kay Johnson; Editing by Nick Macfie)

By Luke Baker

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. and European criticism of Israeli actions in the occupied West Bank have drawn a furious response from Israel this week, including a former official dismissing the U.S. ambassador to Tel Aviv as a "little Jew boy".

Although the concerns expressed by Israel's closest allies were partly cloaked in diplomatic language they struck a nerve in Israel, which is anxious to counter what it sees as growing attempts to isolate it over its policies toward Palestinians.

Ambassador Dan Shapiro's supposed misstep was to observe in a speech to a security conference that Israel applies the law differently to Israelis and Palestinians living in the West Bank. "There seem to be two standards," he said.

It is a point diplomats and human rights groups frequently make, identifying the fact that Palestinians are subject to Israeli military law as part of Israel's 49-year occupation, while Israeli settlers are subject to civil law.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately jumped into the fray, calling Shapiro's comments "unacceptable and wrong". He met with Shapiro, who is Jewish and is usually regarded by Israeli officials as a "close friend", to discuss it.

There was no such attempt to paper over differences from Aviv Bushinsky, a former adviser to Netanyahu and a frequent commentator on Israeli TV. After viewing a clip of Shapiro's comments during a debate on Channel 2, Bushinsky said:

"To put it bluntly, it was a statement typical of a little Jew boy," he said, using the derogatory Yiddish term "yehudoni" to describe the ambassador, who is in his mid-40s.

The U.S. embassy declined to comment.

The criticism heaped on Shapiro was not dissimilar to that aimed at Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, who last week called for an independent investigation into Israel's efforts to quell a surge in violence, saying that in some cases Palestinian assailants were being killed "extrajudicially".

Netanyahu's energy minister called Wallstrom "anti-Semitic, whether consciously or not", and the prime minister did not back away from that characterization, saying of Wallstrom's suggestion: "it's outrageous, it's immoral and it's stupid."

Appearing before the foreign media last week, Netanyahu was asked for his response to those who say Israel increasingly acts as if it is above criticism and cannot be reined in.

"Israel's not above criticism," he said, "but it should be held to the same standard that everyone else is being held to.

"I mean, people are defending themselves against assailants wielding knives who are about to stab them to death, and they shoot the people, and that's extrajudicial killings?"

U.S. AND EU ALLIED

At the event, Netanyahu played up Israel's strong ties with India, China, Japan and Russia, countries that rarely criticize. On the other hand, he acknowledged relations with the European Union, Israel's biggest trading partner, needed a "reset".

The EU has been straightforward in opposing Israeli settlement growth in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a policy seen as illegal by most of the world.

To draw clearer lines between Israel proper and the land it has occupied since the 1967 Middle East war, the EU has called on member states to put labels on imports from the settlements and is considering other ways of "differentiating" between Israel and land the Palestinians seek for their own state.

That has enraged Israel, which says it is being boycotted. But in a sign that the EU's position is gaining support, the U.S. State Department gave it verbal backing on Tuesday.

"We view Israeli settlement activity as illegitimate and counterproductive to the cause of peace," spokesman John Kirby told reporters. "We do not view labeling the origin of products as being from the settlements a boycott of Israel."

With less than a year of Barack Obama's presidency to run, and almost no prospect of a return to Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, some analysts think the U.S. administration could step up its criticism of Israel over the coming months.

When it comes to settlements, there is widespread frustration. In a report on Tuesday, Human Rights Watch called on businesses to stop operating in, financing and trading with Israeli settlements, calling it an ethical obligation. (https://www.hrw.org/node/285045/)

(Writing by Luke Baker; Editing by Dominic Evans)

January 20, 2016

Associated Press: By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV

HEMEIMEEM AIR BASE, Syria (AP) — Russian warplanes were taking off one after another with roaring thunder on Wednesday from their base on Syria’s coast, which was bustling with activity as Moscow pressed its air blitz days before scheduled peace talks.

Helicopter gunships were sweeping low around the base in the province of Latakia to prevent any possible attack. Even though the front line is dozens of kilometers away and the area around the base is tightly controlled, the Russian military methodically patrols the area to make sure there is no ground threat.

Two heavy transport planes were parked near the main terminal as soldiers toting assault rifles stood guard.

Since Russia launched its air campaign in Syria on Sept. 30, its warplanes have flown nearly 6,000 missions. The number is impressive for a compact force comprising just a few dozen warplanes.

Since The Associated Press first visited the Hemeimeem base in October, the military has put a second runway into service and has deployed powerful air defense weapons. The towering launch tubes and massive radar arrays of the long-range S-400 missiles could be seen at the edge of the base.

The Russian military has said it was targeting the Islamic State group and other extremists and has angrily dismissed Western accusations of hitting moderate rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad. Moscow also has rejected claims that its aircraft have hit civilians, insisting all casualties have been at extremist facilities away from populated areas.

Konashenko said Syrian government forces backed by Russian airstrikes have retaken about 250 villages and towns from extremists. Each target is verified through multiple intelligence sources, and every fifth target Russia hits is now chosen thanks to information from “patriotic” opposition forces, he said.

Konashenko said one particularly successful strike was conducted Tuesday in the Aleppo province, where a Russian Su-34 bomber hit a meeting of extremist leaders.

Russian odnance includes bunker-buster bombs capable of piercing seven meters (23 feet) of rock to destroy underground facilities, Konashenko said. All Russian warplanes at the base are equipped with a sophisticated targeting system, allowing them to use even regular bombs with pinpoint accuracy, he said.

More at Associated Press (H/T Yahoo News)