ISIS militants have executed nine young men in Mosul by cutting them in two with a chainsaw, according to reports.

A source living in the city told Iraqi News: "ISIS fighters have executed nine youths of Mosul. The outfit accused that these youths belonged to an anti-ISIS resistance faction."

The source added that the sentenced handed down to the men specified that they should be "tied to an iron pole in the center of Tal Afar Square in Mosul and then sliced into two with an electric chainsaw".

Mosul, which lies on the Nineveh plain in northern Iraq and was once considered the heartland of Iraq's Christian population, has been under ISIS control since June 2014 when militants overran the city.

Since then, numerous stories of brutal executions have emerged. In June, eyewitnesses told ARA News that 19 young Yazidi women had been burned to death for refusing to have sex with jihadists.

The women were reportedly forced into iron cages and set alight as a crowd of hundreds watched on.

Last December, three imams were publicly beheaded after they refused to recruit young people to ISIS' cause.

Iraqi News reports that in total thousands of people have been executed in Mosul since the summer of 2014, the majority of whom were accused of cooperating with security forces trying to flush ISIS out of the city.