• AFP
• March 19, 2016 12:00AM
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Secretary of State John Kerry argued the US was ­already doing its utmost to halt the slaughter.

The US has ­declared Islamic State’s slaughter of Christians, Yazidis and Shi’ites in Iraq and Syria amounts to genocide and has vowed to halt it.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s “moral statement” late on Thursday does not place the US under any new legal obligations, but the White House said it could back an international investigation.

“The US will co-­operate with independent efforts to investigate genocide,” President Barack Obama’s spokesman, Josh Earnest, said yesterday.

Washington does not recognise the International Criminal Court, but officials said US agencies would collect evidence as states seek a way to bring justice to bear.

“Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology and by actions, in what it says, what it ­believes and what it does,” Mr Kerry said. “Daesh is also responsible for crimes against humanity and ­ethnic cleansing directed at these same groups.”

Islamic State recruits Sunni ­extremists and has regularly carried out mass killings of Shia Muslim, Christian and Yazidi prisoners. In June 2014, it seized the cosmopolitan city of Mosul in northern Iraq, placing whole communities under threat of ­murder, rape or enslavement. In March last year UN investigators warned the self-­proclaimed caliphate was trying to wipe out Yazidis, members of a pre-Islamic religious minority.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre welcomed the decision to name Christians and Yazidis as victims. “We reiterate our call that the US put these two groups at the front of the line for consideration for immigration to our country,” it said.

A State Department official said the genocide ruling would not itself change the rules for granting refugee status. But he insisted ­Syrian asylum-seekers were ­already being considering sympathetically because of Islamic State atrocities.

Mr Kerry argued the US was ­already doing its utmost to halt the slaughter by leading a coalition to “degrade and destroy” the group.

Through airstrikes and support for local forces, the coalition has pushed ISIS from 40 per cent of the ground it once held in Iraq and 20 per cent in Syria, he said.

“In my judgment, Daesh is ­responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians and Shia Muslims,” Mr Kerry said.

“For those communities, the stakes in this campaign are utterly existential.”

Mr Kerry issued his ruling after the US congress voted to declare the ­killings a genocide and ­demanded the administration take a position. Representative Vern Buchanan, of Florida, welcomed a ­decision he said was long overdue. “ISIS is the face of evil and there is no room for equivocation. Their actions clearly constitute genocide,” he said.

But House human rights committee chairman Chris Smith asked: “Now what?”

Washington, he argued, should lobby for an international court — like those set up to prosecute war crimes in Rwanda or Yugoslavia — to be created. “A Syria tribunal would hold not only the genocides of ISIS, but all parties — especially the war criminal Bashar al-Assad, who has barrel-bombed Syrian ­civilians and killed tens of thousands — ­accountable for their horrific deeds,” Mr Smith said.

The State Department official would not be drawn on calls for a new court.

AFP