Fighters with the Islamic State (ISIS) are selling teenage girls in slave markets, some for a pack of cigarettes, according to a new report.
The United Nations envoy on sexual violence spent some time in Iraq and Syria in April and concluded the practice happens frequently — particularly when the terror group takes over a town or village,
Agence France-Presse reports.
Zainab Bangura said she is now working on ways to address the problem.
"This is a war that is being fought on the bodies of women," Bangura said.
Bangura, according to the AFP report, met with girls who had escaped their ISIS captors and uncovered some horrific stories.
"They kidnap and abduct women when they take areas so they have — I don't want to call it a fresh supply — but they have new girls," Bangura said.
The girls are then sold for "as little as a pack of cigarettes," or as much as several hundred or thousand dollars, Bangura told AFP.
She described a situation in which more than 100 girls were taken and locked in a room, stripped naked and washed, only to be lined up in front of men who determined each girl's value.
Bangura added that ISIS uses this practice of sex slavery to recruit more fighters as they dole out promises of providing them women to marry.
Last month, Bangura spoke about her trip to Iraq and Syria. In a
Mirror report, she further described the auctions girls are being forced into.
"Girls are literally being stripped naked and examined in slave bazaars," she said, adding that they are being sent to ISIS leaders and fighters.
A CNN report in April, meanwhile, told the story of one Yazidi girl from Iraqi Kurdistan who was put into sex slavery but managed to escape a house with a handful of other girls.
A
Daily Beast story posted last summer told similar stories of sexual abuse and rape at the hands of ISIS fighters and leaders.
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