DHAKA: Amnesty International says it has new evidence Islamic State militants are carrying out "a wave of ethnic cleansing" against minorities in northern Iraq, BBC reports on Tuesday.

The human rights group said IS had turned the region into "blood-soaked killing fields".

Earlier, Iraqi Shia militias and Kurdish forces broke a two-month siege by IS fighters in the town of Amerli.

IS and allied Sunni rebels have seized large swathes of Iraq and Syria.

Thousands of people have been killed, the majority of them civilians, and more than a million have been forced to flee their homes in recent months.

BDST: 1952 HRS, SEP 02, 2014