(MENAFN- Arab News) BAGHDAD: The Islamic State group has executed at least four women including two doctors and a politician in their northern Iraq strongholds this month relatives and rights activists said on Saturday.

In the IS hub of Mosul the militants executed three women on Wednesday including two doctors Hanaa Edwar a human rights activist who heads the Al-Amal organization said.

A medical source in Mosul confirmed their deaths and named the two doctors as Maha Sabhan and Lamia Ismail. The third woman was a law graduate.

On Oct. 5 Iman Mohammed Yunus a former Sunni parliamentarian from the Iraq Turkmen Front in the city of Tal Afar farther west toward the Syrian border was also executed.

'They took her from her home last month and called her family this week to say that she had been executed' said Ali Al-Bayati who runs a foundation supporting the rights of Iraq's Turkmen minority.

'Then they dumped her body in a water well outside Tal Afar' he said.

According to Edwar who confirmed Yunus' execution at least four other women were executed by IS militants in the Mosul area in recent weeks.

Among them were a former candidate for the local council and an academic. 'Women are easy targets for them. Many of the rights activists from Mosul ran away but some of the women among them had to stay with their children' Edwar said.

They have used the city Iraq's second largest as a de facto capital for the Iraqi half of the 'caliphate' which their leadership proclaimed in June and also includes large parts of Syria.

'After going after the ethnic and religious minorities they are now hunting down Sunni members of civil society groups and anyone remotely connected with the government' Edwar said.

She said IS was probably trying to sow maximum fear among the population by openly targeting women.

'When you abduct and kill women you are really spreading horror' she said.