Twenty decapitated bodies found in Fallujah

The decapitated bodies of 20 Iraqis were found in the city of Fallujah on Wednesday, medical sources have revealed.

Tribal leaders in Anbar province said the massacre had taken place in an area controlled by the Popular Mobilisation - an umbrella group of Shia militias fighting to re-take territory held by the Islamic State group, which identifies as Sunni.

A doctor at the Fallujah hospital, who asked not to be identified, said that health workers found the bodies in a neighbourhood east of the city. He said that the victims had been tortured and mutilated before being killed and beheaded.  

The doctor noted the difficulty of identifying the bodies, indicating that they were displaced civilians attempting to flee eastwards from Fallujah on their way to Baghdad.  

Fallujah council member Abdul-Rahman al-Jamaili said the neighbourhood where the bodies were found was under the control of Iraqi militias. He called on the Iraqi government to immediately investigate the massacre and bring the perpetrators to justice.  

There has also been local speculation the bodies may have belonged to victims of Islamic State group militants, saying fighters had previously mutilated bodies in order to obscure identities.  

Iraqi coalition forces, meanwhile, accused the Iraqi federal police of colluding with some factions in the Popular Mobilisation militias to enter the city of Fallujah, in what what be an apparent attempt to circumvent the Iraqi government's decision to prevent non-state militias to enter the city.  

The UN Security Council has warned against paramilitary groups retaliating against perceived IS targets or sympathisers in Fallujah and called on the Iraqi government to protect civilians fleeing the city.  

In response to allegations of human rights abuses against civilians carried out by militias and the Iraqi army alike, Human Rights Watch said the Fallujah campaign was "a test for the government's ability to hold abusive forces accountable".

"The Iraqi government needs to control and hold accountable its own forces if it hopes to claim the moral upper hand in its fight against [IS]," said Joe Stork, the group's deputy Middle East director.

"It's high time for Iraqi authorities to unravel the web of culpability underlying the government forces' repeated outrages against civilians."