In a recently released report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), which covers human rights violations across the world, it was revealed that Iraqi people are not only suffering from atrocities committed by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) militants but also from armed government-backed Shiite militants. The report said the militias work closely with Iraqi government forces. "Abuses by militias allied with Iraqi security forces in Sunni areas have escalated in recent months. Residents have been forced from their homes, kidnapped, and in some cases summarily executed."The report said "at least 3,000 people have fled their homes in the Muqdadiyya area of Diyala province since June 2014 and, since October, been prevented from returning. In addition to the events documented here, Human Rights Watch is conducting an investigation into more recent allegations that militia and SWAT forces killed 72 civilians in the town of Barwana, also in Muqdadiyya," the report said. The report also underlines that many have been abducted and dozens of families lost contact with their relatives."Residents told Human Rights Watch that security forces and allied militias began to harass residents in the vicinity of Muqdadiyya, an area 80 kilometres northeast of Baghdad in June, shortly after ISIS took over Mosul. The abuses escalated around October, witnesses said, the month after Hayder al-Abadi took over as prime minister, pledging to rein in abusive militias and to end the sectarianism that fed the cycle of violence under his predecessor," the report said. Joe Stork, Deputy Middle East and North Africa Director, said "Iraqi civilians are being hammered by ISIS and then by pro-government militias in areas they seize from ISIS. With the government responding to those they deem terrorists with arbitrary arrests and executions, residents have nowhere to turn for protection."HRW spoke to the residents and one of them, a 70-year-old resident of al-Bulour village in Muqdadiyya, who identified herself as Um Mariam, said that on December 8, 2014, Muqdadiyya police took her sons, Karim, 33, and Seif, 38, from their home without an arrest warrant. "They burst into the house and grabbed them," she said. They released the men, who Um Mariam said were civilians, two days later. But at about 3:30 p.m. on December 12, as their mother watched them approach the al-Bulour checkpoint on their return home, six armed men wearing black or camouflage with their faces covered grabbed the two men. The armed men pushed Um Mariam and threatened to shoot her if she screamed: "I was kissing their hands to make them stop, and they just kicked me off of them," she said. Immediately afterward, Um Mariam went to file a complaint with the police station commander, who told her the police "couldn't do anything" about the abduction, she said. A farmer in his 50s from al-Bulour who identified himself as Abu Seif said that "beginning on June 20, militiamen and volunteers fighting with the quasi-governmental Popular Front began attacking the villages of al-Bulour, Matar, Aruba, Hurriyya, and al-Sudur al-Harouniyya, together home to approximately 1,000 Sunni families. He said he identified the militiamen by the writing on the sides of their vehicles as members of "the Islamic Resistance Asa'ib Ahl al-Haqq." He added that he saw militiamen and volunteers burn at least 50 houses in the villages and fire mortars and rockets on homes in June. It is not known whether any ISIS fighters were present in the villages at the time. He said that widespread kidnapping of fighting-age males over the course of the months that followed prompted most residents to flee.In a previous report released on last October by Amnesty International, which covers human rights violations in more than 150 countries, it was revealed that Iraqi people are not only suffering from atrocities committed by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) militants but also from armed government-backed Shiite militants. The report claims that the Iraqi government is largely responsible for the attacks on the civilians since the militias target Sunni Iraqis deliberately, as a response to the ISIS attacks, despite there being no concrete evidence that links ISIS and unarmed Sunnis.The report said "In recent months, Shi'a militias have been abducting and killing Sunni civilian men in Baghdad and around the country. These militias, often armed and backed by the government of Iraq, continue to operate with varying degrees of cooperation from government forces – ranging from tacit consent to coordinated, or even joint, operations. For these reasons, Amnesty International holds the government of Iraq largely responsible for the serious human rights abuses, including war crimes, committed by these militias."The witnesses and relatives of the victims told Amnesty officials the Shiite militias were killing people randomly in response to the ISIS attacks. The killings were more common in the cities that were previously captured by ISIS militants where the Iraqi forces later seized control. The witnesses claim that the country has been dragged into deeper sectarian chaos and that there is no security on the streets. The perpetrators of the killings, abductions and torture were not only the armed militants but also government forces. Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi has admitted that there was excessive use of force.