ISIS militants in Mosul have allegedly contracted Ebola and are showing up in dozens at an Iraqi hospital, according to multiple Iraqi and Kurdish media sources.
An undisclosed number of Islamic State militants displaying signs of the virus have reportedly attended a hospital in the ISIS-held city of Mosul, 250 miles north of Baghdad, according to three local media outlets. The city, known as ISIS's most important strategic stronghold in Iraq, has been under the control of the Islamic State since June of 2014 and reportedly executed more than a dozen doctors for refusing to treat injured fighters in late December, Mashable reported.
The disease was brought to Mosul by Africa-based Islamist "terrorists" arriving "from several countries.
Since the symptoms of Ebola, which include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, bleeding and bruising, are similar to those of other diseases such as malaria and yellow fever, it could easily have been misdiagnosed, according to UK MailOnline.
Hence, the reports are being investigated by the World Health Organization. The group is attempting to reach out to officials in ISIS-held areas to offer help in investigating the matter, WHO spokesman Christy Feig said.
"We have no official notification from the Iraqi government that it is Ebola," Feig told Mashable.
However since UN workers are currently banned from entering ISIS-controlled areas in both Iraq and Syria, it is unlikely that an operation in the region could successfully be carried out.
In addition, the terrorist group is known to be against western science and medicine, which would indicate that health authorities in Mosul might not be properly equipped to test for Ebola or trained to treat patients and prevent the spread of the disease.
"Services are collapsing, prices are soaring, and medicines are scarce in towns and cities across the 'caliphate' proclaimed in Iraq and Syria by ISIS," according to The Washington Post.
Meanwhile, a recent report revealed that ISIS has reportedly found an extremely sordid means to fund its terrorist organization across the Middle East: by trafficking human organs from dead soldiers and dead and living hostages, including children.
For months, foreign doctors have allegedly been recruited by ISIS commanders to harvest internal organs not only from the bodies of their own dead soldiers, but also from living hostages - including children - taken from minority villages in Iraq and Syria, according to a report by al-Monitor news website.
"Surgeries take place within a hospital and organs are quickly transported through networks specialized in trafficking human organs," the report's author wrote. "The organs come from fallen fighters who were quickly transported to the hospital, injured people who were abandoned or individuals who were kidnapped."
Then, a majority of the organs are smuggled out of Syria and Iraq into neighboring countries like Saudi Arabia or Turkey where criminal gangs sell them on to shady buyers across the globe, the Assyrian International News Agency reported.
