Iraqi activist group Mosul Eye says the ISIS Shar’ia Board issued a savage “oral fatwa (an Islamic term for a religious decree)” to its members authorising them to “kill newborn babies with Down’s Syndrome and congenital deformities and disabled children”.

If true – and reports from the war-torn region are difficult to verify – it means ISIS has taken a leaf from the Nazis, who murdered disabled children it perceived to be a “burden on the state”.

Mosul Eye monitored the deaths of children with Down’s Syndrome and other congenital deformities and discovered the fatwa was issued by one of Islamic States’s Shar’ia judges, a Saudi judge named ” Abu Said Aljazrawi.