BAGHDAD: Iraq said on Friday that it executed 13 death row militants after Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi vowed a forceful retaliation to calm public anger over the militant Islamic State group’s murder of abducted civilians.

While Iraqis have grown accustomed to the atrocities committed by IS, the killing of the eight civilians shocked the nation and doused hopes the militants had been defeated.

For the first time, the authorities released photographs of the hangings, which came after Abadi on Thursday ordered the “immediate” executions of hundreds of convicted militants.

The justice ministry said that the 13 convicts put to death at a prison in southern Iraq “had participated in armed operations with terrorist groups, in kidnappings, bombings and murders of civilians”.

It said that another group of 64 convicts could also be put to death after they lost an appeal for a stay of execution.

More than 300 people, including around 100 foreign women, have been condemned to death in Iraq and hundreds of others to life imprisonment for membership of IS, a judicial source said in April.

Abadi faced harsh criticism on social networks by Iraqis who accused him of failing to respond in force to the militants.

On Friday Iraq’s top Shia cleric Ayatollah Ali Sistani joined the fray, blaming the government for failing “to take into consideration appeals by families to act quickly and save” the victims.

Under pressure, Abadi on Thursday ordered “the immediate punishment of terrorists condemned to death” whose appeals have been exhausted, his office said.

A photograph released by the justice ministry showed a group of blindfolded and handcuffed men sitting on the floor waiting to be executed. Another showed several convicts being hanged at the prison in Nasiriyah.

Abadi vowed to avenge the deaths of the eight civilians held captive by IS, after their bodies were found along a highway north of Baghdad.

“Our security and military forces will take forceful revenge against these terrorist cells,” he told senior military officials and ministers.

“We promise that we will kill or arrest those who committed this crime,” he added.

Six of the abductees — civilians working in the logistics department of the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force that helped defeat the militants — had appeared in an IS video released on Saturday with badly bruised faces.

IS had threatened to execute their captives unless Baghdad released Sunni Muslim women held in its prisons.

Iraq declared victory over IS in December after expelling the militants from all major towns and cities in a vast offensive.

Published in Dawn, June 30th, 2018