The Islamic State is reportedly targeting educated women across controlled-areas in Iraq, with three female lawyers having recently been executed, Al-Arabiya reported.
The terrorist organization, which controls large swathes of territory in Iraq and in neighboring war-ravaged Syria, is portraying a "monstrous disregard for human life" by killing hundreds of civilians in ISIS-controlled areas, including Mosul, the United Nations said on Tuesday, warning that educated women in Iraq are especially at risk.
"Educated, professional women, particularly women who have run as candidates in elections for public office, seem to be particularly at risk," UN spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said. "In just the first two weeks of this year, reports indicate that three female lawyers were executed."
Mainly, ISIS is known to force "cruel and inhuman punishments" on any individual who has been accused of violating its "extremist interpretations of Islamic Sharia law, or for suspected disloyalty."
Aside from educated women, the ISIS militants have also been killing people from a number of other groups, according to UK MailOnline.
"The ruthless murder of two men, who were thrown off the top of a building after having been accused of homosexual acts by a so-called court in Mosul," is one of them, Shamdasani noted.
In December, one Islamic State militant was reportedly responsible for killing 150 women, including pregnant women and young teenagers, because they refused to comply with the "Jihad marriage" order enforced by the terrorist organization, according to Iraq's Ministry of Human Rights.
Abu Anas Al-Libi is suspected of gunning down the women, most of whom were Yazidi, because they refused to enter into sham temporary marriages simply for the purpose of performing sexual acts with the ISIS terrorists, a practice believed to be a Koranic loophole, Al Arabiya's Jawad El-Hatab reported.
Meanwhile in an extremely gruesome tactic, ISIS militants in Iraq have been stuffing hundreds of live scorpions inside bombs and launching them to incite fear among their enemies, according to a British military expert who returned from the country.
Poisonous varieties of scorpions packed inside 2-ft canisters are being blasted into towns and villages, which then explode on impact - scattering the scorpions and causing panic among civilian areas in the north of the country, senior Iraqi officials revealed.
"It's madness. ISIS has improvised devices to launch them," Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, ex-head of chemical and biological weapons for the Army and NATO, told The Mirror. "They promote the fact that they are doing it and it creates panic."