Iraq executes 21 people mostly over 'terror' charges

Iraqi authorities have hanged at least 21 people, including a woman, most of them convicted over "terrorism" charges, three security sources have said.

"Twenty-one convicts including a woman were executed" on charges including "terrorism" and being part of Daesh, an Iraqi security official said on Wednesday.

The same source said they were executed in Al-Hut prison in the southeastern city of Nassiriya. Two other sources said they were all Iraqi nationals.

A medical source in Dhi Qar province, of which Nassiriya is the capital, said the forensic department had received the bodies of the executed convicts from the prison authority.

It is reportedly the largest number of executions reported in one day in years in Iraq, which has previously come under fire over its trial processes and the use of capital punishment on a mass scale.

Courts have handed down hundreds of death and life sentences in recent years to Iraqis convicted of "terrorism", in trials rights groups have denounced as hasty.