Militants of the so-called ’Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ (ISIL) takfiri groups may have committed genocide in trying to wipe out the Yazidi minority in Iraq.

Militants of the so-called 'Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant' (ISIL) takfiri groups may have committed genocide in trying to wipe out the Yazidi minority in Iraq, the UN said Thursday in a report laying out a litany of atrocities.

ISIL "may have committed all three of the most serious international crimes - namely war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide," the United Nations human rights office said in a statement.

The agency published a horrifying report detailing killings, torture, rape, sexual slavery and the use of child soldiers by the extremists.

All of these crimes, it said, were violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, and some may amount to "crimes against humanity" and "war crimes".

The report, which is based on interviews with more than 100 witnesses and survivors of attacks in Iraq between June 2014 and February 2015, especially highlights brutal ISIL attacks on ethnic and religious groups, including Yazidis, Christians, Turkmen, Kurds and Shia.

ISIL, which controls a swathe of territory in Iraq and neighboring Syria, launched "a series of systematic and widespread attacks on the Yazidi minority's heartland in the northern Nineveh province last August.

According to the report, the attacks appeared intended "to destroy the Yazidi as a group," which "strongly suggests" ISIL is guilty of "genocide" against the Yazidi.

The report, which was ordered by the UN Human Rights Council last September following a request from the Iraqi government, pointed out that some villages "were entirely emptied of their Yazidi population."