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By Supriya Jha | Last Updated: Monday, September 15, 2014 - 17:23

Zee Media Bureau/Supriya Jha

Washington: Notorious for having decapitated three Westerners in less than a month, the barbaric extremists of the Islamic State are now almost synonymous with 'beheaders'. However, there is much more to their barbarism, than they flaunt in videos posted online.

Having annexed huge swathes of occupied territory across Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State established an Islamic Caliphate there in June. And then then they started unleashing a bloody and barbaric trail of terror, torturing and murdering people, and the ugliest element being the abduction, torture, forced conversion and rape of women.

According to a blog posted by the US State Department, “thousands of women and girls abducted from their families and sold in markets”over the last two months”.

The blog paints a sad and painful portrait of Iraqi women, who have been taken from their homes in Iraq and subjected to unspeakable atrocities including rape, torture, forced conversion to Islam, kept as sex slaves, etc. Some of them are reportedly forced to watch their children being thrashed badly by the IS extremists until they convert to Islam.

Citing a plethora of reports, the blog post written by Catherine Russell, goes on to describe the tragic plight of thousands of innocent women, and calls for directing the use of resources and expertise from anti-IS coalition (whose making is in process), to ensure that the women in the captivity of the extremists return safely to their homes.

“Now, as we galvanize an international coalition to work with the newly formed Iraqi government to confront the evil represented by these extremists, we need to ensure ISIL’s horrendous treatment of women and girls is front and center,” reads the blog.

The blog further cites reports of abduction of some 1,500 to 4,000 women and girls, mainly from Iraqi minorities and regrets how even the young ones of age 12 and 13, too, were auctioned to the IS monsters “like cattle”.

“Girls as young as 12 or 13 have been forced to marry extremists or sold to the highest bidder -- like cattle at an auction”.

Reportedly, many women have begged to die rather than to bear with the intolerable trauma and brutality meted out to them by the IS men.

There is a sea of “heartbreaking and terrifying” stories of such Iraqi women in IS captivity who prefer to die than to live as Islamic State extremists' concubines.

Explaining how the “de-humanization of women and girls is central to ISIL’s campaign of terror”, the blog recommends the newly formed Iraqi government and the international coalition being formed to hold discussions on how to ensure the safe return of “those who have been abducted and trafficked”.