Dubai/Baghdad, Jul 9: At least 45 Daesh group militants have died after eating a poisoned iftar meal, British newspaper the Daily Mail has reported.
The poisoning is thought to have happened in Mosul, the report added, citing a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Party.
It is not clear whether the incident was due to food poisoning or intended — but if this was an attack — it will not have been the first time. According to the newspaper, dozens of the terrorists have been killed by poisoning in similar attacks.
In the latter case, the newspaper cited local press claiming Free Syrian Army rebels managed to infiltrate a Daesh camp posing as chefs and poisoned the food served to the militants.
The report showed Daesh men sitting next to a meal of fried fish, green salad and what appears to be Pepsi Cola and other western soda drinks.
In a separate video, long queues of women and children can be seen apparently waiting with empty containers for food and water. It is currently summer in Iraq and Syria where temperatures regularly exceed 40 degrees.
In another development, a Baghdad court on Wednesday sentenced 24 suspected members of the Daesh group to death for their role in the killing of hundreds of Iraqi soldiers during the extremists’ blitz across the country last year.
The case stems from the horrific killings of 1,700 Iraqi soldiers at the hands of the Daesh militants who captured the troops after the terror group overran Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit in June 2014.
At the time, the soldiers were trying to flee from Camp Speicher, a nearby army base.
After Tikrit was captured, Daesh posted graphic images and video that showed its gunmen massacring scores of the soldiers after loading the captives onto flatbed trucks and then forcing them to lay face down in a shallow ditch.
Iraqi forces, assisted by airstrikes from a US-led coalition, retook Tikrit in April, and arrested dozens of suspects linked to the massacre. Forensic teams exhumed many of the bodies from mass graves believed to contain some of the hundreds of soldiers killed by Daesh militants.
The 24 defendants sentenced Wednesday to death by hanging were charged with the killings and membership in a terror group. All pleaded not guilty, insisting that they never took part in the massacre. They told the court their confessions were coerced under torture by Iraqi officers.
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