The United Nations has revealed that Christians are being targeted in a “systematic and widespread” attempt by Islamic State to destroy their presence in the Middle East.

According to a newly released report, based on Iraqi government records of civilian deaths and casualties together with eyewitness accounts of Islamic State atrocities, Christians, together with Yazidis, continue to be despised minorities open to summary execution and other abuses as Islamic State seeks to drive all ‘non-believers’ from its envisioned caliphate. Importantly, the report suggests that such actions may amount to genocide.

Cataloguing a raft of atrocities being committed by Islamic State, the UN report states that the level of violence being endured by civilians in areas controlled by Islamic State is “staggering”.

The report says: “So-called Islamic State [ISIL] continues to commit systematic and widespread violence and abuses of international human rights law and humanitarian law.

“These acts may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide.

“ISIL continues to target members of different ethnic and religious communities, intentionally depriving them of their fundamental rights and subjecting them to a range of abuses under international human rights and humanitarian law. These acts appear to form part of a systematic and widespread policy that aims to suppress, permanently expel, or destroy many of these communities within ISIL areas of control.”

Further: “ISIL has continued to attack civilian and protected objects in the conduct of its operations. Sites of religious and cultural significance are particularly targeted.”

This latter element was confirmed immediately after the issuing of the UN report when newly released satellite imagery from Mosul in Iraq revealed that the oldest Christian monastery in the country has been completely destroyed. St Elijah’s had stood on a hill near the city for 1,400 years.

The UN report lends further weight to those voices which have been calling for the international community to recognise as genocide, the actions of Islamic State against Christians. Among these have been US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, and Britain’s Lord Alton, who has regularly highlighted in the House of Lords the plight Christians in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the UN report, the EU’s High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini addressed the European Parliament on the situation facing Christians in the Middle East, setting in train a vote scheduled for early February on a resolution to respond more effectively to that issue.

Welcoming the EU moves, ADF International, a legal organisation dedicated to defending freedom of religion, said it was now time for parliamentarians to designate as genocide the suffering being endured by Middle East Christians.

“Christians in the Middle East urgently need this recognition to wake the world up to what is going on,” ADF’s director of EU Advocacy, Sophia Kuby, said. “In contrast to other diplomatic notions such as ‘systematic mass murder’, ‘genocide’ is an internationally recognised legal term.”

Ms Kuby called further for further steps to address the issue, urging “a resolution at the UN Security Council and a referral to the International Criminal Court”.

The United Nations report can be viewed online at:http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IQ/UNAMIReport1May31October2015.pdf