Iraq is investigating a report that special forces tortured, raped and killed captives during operations to seize Mosul from the Islamic State group, the interior ministry said Thursday.

The minister ordered the probe in response to allegations by German magazine Der Spiegel.

In the report, Iraqi photographer Ali Arkady said Rapid Response Division officers and their men "torture, rape but also kill people", based on "vague suspicious facts" about links to IS.

Interior ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan told AFP the ministry's Internal Affairs Directorate was investigating the claims and that "all the details will be announced upon completion".

The ministry's Rapid Response Division is one of two special forces units heading up the operation to recapture Mosul, which is backed by a United States-led anti-IS coalition.

IS seized Mosul and swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territory in a 2014 offensive aided by widespread anti-government sentiment among Sunni Arabs angered by their political marginalisation and the impunity of security forces.

Abuses such as those described in the Der Spiegel report could sow the seeds of future conflict even as security forces near the end of the battle for Mosul, IS's most emblematic stronghold.

Arkady -- who has left the country with his family -- gave examples of people he said were tortured or killed.

He cited some of the victims' names, and said there was a "kind of contest" between the police and Rapid Response forces over rapes and murders.

- 'We don't take prisoners' -

He said he had initially envisioned a positive story featuring two members of the Rapid Response force, but the final article was very different.

It was published under the headline "Not Heroes, But Monsters".

Based on Arkady's footage, ABC News has also reported that the Rapid Response Division had tortured detainees.

Among other incidents, Arkady captured footage of two half-brothers being tortured over a period of seven hours by methods including electric shocks, ABC said.

Arkady later received a video apparently showing the two men dead.

He also received a mobile phone video that appeared to show a handcuffed prisoner being executed, ABC said.

Following the release of the Der Spiegel report, the Rapid Response Division put out a video aimed at refuting Arkady's reporting.

It showed alleged victims speaking on camera in the presence of Captain Omar Nazar, an officer Arkady said was involved in the abuses.

But ABC said Nazar had admitted in a phone interview that the footage shot by Arkady depicted actual events.

"We don't take prisoners," ABC quoted Nazar as saying.

Iraqi forces launched the operation to retake Mosul in October, advancing on the city and recapturing its eastern side before setting their sights on the smaller but more densely populated west.

More than seven months into the operation, IS now controls just a handful of areas around the Old City, a warren of narrow streets that provides an ideal environment for the jihadists' defence.

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US probe finds over 100 civilians killed in Mosul air strike
Washington (AFP) May 25, 2017
A Pentagon investigation has concluded that at least 105 civilians died in an anti-IS strike in the Iraqi city of Mosul in March, officials said Thursday, but they blamed the toll on a secondary explosion of jihadist munitions. A US aircraft delivered a single precision-guided bomb into a building in west Mosul on March 17, with the aim of killing a pair of snipers on the second story of the ... read more

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