The 19 women had been abducted and held hostage by the ISIS in its stronghold of Mosul, Iraq, which the terrorist group had seized in June 2014.
The news report mentions a UN official as saying that young girls and women, belonging either to the Yazidi or the Christian community, are captured by the ISIS wherever they raid. The ISIS views the Yazidis and the Christians as heretics.
It is not known, however, if the 19 victims belonged to either community.
A disturbing ISIS document, which the UN official verified for the news agency, directs its members to sell the Yazidi or Christian girls and women they have captured, with one to nine-year-old girls fetching the highest sum.
The UN official said that the ISIS traded women as “barrels of petrol”, each having a price according to her physical attributes. Sometimes, the official added, one woman is even sold off to six different men. At the ISIS slave market, the abductees are stripped naked and sold off to the highest bidder. Also, the report says that the ISIS fighters get to choose first, followed by “wealthy Middle-Easterners”.
Sometimes, those girls who are fortunate enough, are sold back to their families for a huge ransom.