Islamic State (ISIS) militants massacred 17 members of a family in Mosul, Iraq in yet another demonstration of their group's unmitigated and mindless savagery.
One woman and her son managed to miraculously survive the attack, the Daily Star reported.
The grief-stricken mother told local news channel AlMawsleya TV how a band of ISIS thugs entered their home and told members of her large family that they were being evacuated to safety ahead of what they claimed was an incoming attack.
"ISIS told us to leave the house at eight o'clock. We left our home. They told us to wait in line one by one. We didn't realise and, all of a sudden, a bomb exploded on my family, killing all of them – 17 people from my family were gone," the unidentified woman said.
She said the explosion was so powerful that it mangled the bodies of the victims. "May God protect their bodies. I want to know which bodies are which. I don't want anything else," she said.
Among the victims, she said, were her three-year-old son and her disabled daughter. Also killed were her older son, her husband, her husband's brothers, their spouses, and their grandmother.
She said she and one of her sons miraculously survived the treacherous ISIS bomb attack. "My heart is burning. Only me and my son survived. No one else ... Just me and my son remained in the middle of all the bodies," she said.
ISIS militants have long gained notoriety for the sick ways they have been torturing and killing their victims.
Last month, the Daily Star reported the discovery of an ISIS slaughterhouse where men, women and children were taken to be killed.
Also in March, ISIS militants seized 197 children for use as human shields, according to the Clarion Project, citing the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights (IOHR) as source.
The children were reportedly being held around a mosque on the east bank of Mosul and used as human shields to halt the coalition forces advancing towards eastern Mosul, said Mustafa Sa'adoun, who heads the IOHR.
Sa'adoun also revealed that ISIS executed 122 civilians on March 25 after they were caught trying to flee Mosul.
The following day, ISIS militants executed 26 men in front of their families in another part of the city, according to another human rights organisation.
Earlier in March, ISIS sent suicide bombers to try and hold off the advancing Iraqi forces besieging Mosul.
Iraqi forces caught one of the bombers—a 7-year-old boy who had explosives strapped around his body, a previous report said.
