Three men are beheaded with blood-covered sword by ISIS

Photographs of the barbaric murders show the blindfolded men kneeling in the centre of what appears to be a traffic roundabout with a crowd of people looking on as a masked executioner stands by with a long, rusty blade.

After an elderly man uses a microphone to read to the crowd from his notes, the executioner then steps forward with the blade poised above the men's heads in the unnamed city in northern Iraq.

Accompanying captions said the trio were then beheaded - two for engaging in homosexual acts and the third for alleged blasphemy - but there were no images released of the actual beheading.

The jihadist group, which controls swathes of Iraq and neighbouring Syria, has carried out hundreds of barbaric executions as it has imposed its brutal version of Islamic law, many of which are photographed or videotaped.

The photos were said to have been taken in Nineveh province - the first to fall to a sweeping IS-led offensive last June - but the exact location was not specified. 

Many young men have also been thrown from the roofs of buildings throughout ISIS-controlled areas after being accused of engaging in homosexual acts.

The stomach-churning photographs usually show a blindfolded victim being dragged to the top of a building by black-masked militants.

As crowds gather at street level the men are thrown to their death, while jihadis and members of the public use mobile phones to film the gruesome murders.

Iraqi troops and militia are battling to push the jihadists back with support from a US-led coalition and Iran.

But retaking Nineveh and its capital Mosul poses a major challenge for Baghdad's forces, as the militants have had more than nine months to dig in.

Iraqi forces launched a huge operation last week aimed at retaking the city of Tikrit that, if successful, would serve as a stepping stone towards Mosul.

Images of the bloodthirsty group's latest execution come amid claims a former member of ISIS claimed he witnessed the British graduate dubbed Jihadi John behead a Japanese hostage.

The man, named only as Saleh, said the masked militant who appears in several beheading videos was a senior figure in the extremist organisation responsible for murdering foreign captives.

Jihadi John, who was recently unmasked as 26-year-old Londoner Mohammed Emwazi, was last seen in a video posted online which appeared to show Japanese hostage Kenji Goto lying dead.

Saleh, who worked as a translator, also revealed that ISIS routinely subjected hostages to mock executions so that when their beheading did finally come they were not expecting to die, according to Sky News.

(dailymail.co.uk)