IS forced woman to restore virginity every time she was married: UN official

A United Nations official has revealed that Islamic State (IS) forced a sex slave to undergo surgery to restore her virginity every time she was married to 20 fighters.

After speaking to several sexual abuse victims in the region, Zainab Bangura, special envoy on sexual violence in conflict, said that sexual abuse was being committed strategically in a widespread and systematic manner and with a high-degree of sophistication by most parties to the conflict in Syria and Iraq, reported The Independent.

She said that the terror group had institutionalised sexual violence and the brutalization of women as a central aspect of their ideology and operations, using it as a tactic of terrorism to advance their key strategic objectives. The UN report also claimed that the terrorists fighting in Syria were seeking medical help to boost their sexual prowess, subjecting their wives to 'brutal, abnormal' sex acts.

Survivors said girls as young as five years old were being abducted from homes and raped and abused. Some of them were sent back to their homes when pregnancy occurred and faced ostracism from their communities.Human Rights Watch asked the Kurdish and Iraqi authorities to provide long-term psychosocial care to the rape victims.