The ambassador of Iraq to the United Nations on Tuesday told the Security Council to investigate information that Islamic State militants are harvesting organs to help fund their activities.

Iraqi Ambassador to the U.N. Mohamed Alhakim said that in the past several weeks, mass graves had been discovered bearing bodies with missing body parts such as kidneys and some bore marks of surgical cuts.

Like Us on Facebook

He asked Council members to come examine the recovered bodies, which were clearly missing certain body parts.

Alhakim added several physicians hd also been killed in Mosul for refusing to take part in harvesting organs.

He said Islamic State committed "crimes of genocide" in bearing down on particular ethnic groups, in a briefing before the council on the situation on the ground in Iraq.

The U.N.'s outgoing representative to Iraq, Nikolay Mladenov, said at the council briefing that in January this year alone, Islamic State killed nearly 800 people in acts of armed conflict and terrorism.

Mladenov echoed concerns over the growing number of complaints and reports that Islamic State had been harvesting organs to raise funds. He stressed that it was very clear Islamic State tactics were expanding by the day.

He said the most important matter in Iraq is to gain back the vast lands that Islamic State has managed to rule since last year. Islamic State militants have captured about a third of the territories of both Syria and Iraq where it has imposed stern Sharia law.

The diplomat is especially worried with the rising number of reports of revenge attacks carried out against certain followers of the Sunni Muslim faith in communities freed from Islamic State control.

TagsISIS, Iraq, Organ harvesting