The Islamic State has boasted of giving Yazidi women and children captured in northern Iraq to its fighters as spoils of war in the latest issue of its propoganda magazine Dabiq.

In it the terror group admits for the first time that it sells captured Yazidis as slaves.

Leaders of the minority group, many of whom have fled their homes in northern Iraq due to the four-month-old insurgency, warned in August the community faced genocide.

The treatment of the Yazidis, who number in the tens of thousands, has sparked outrage across the globe.

Many were trapped on a mountain near the town of Sinjar in August. Others were massacred and the fate of hundreds of missing women and children had been a mystery.

But in an article in the Islamic State magazine, Dabiq, called "The revival of slavery before the hour', IS argues it has restored an aspect of Sharia (Islamic law) to its original meaning by enslaving people it claims hold deviant religious beliefs.

The Yazidi faith is a unique blend of beliefs that draws from several religions and includes the worship of a devil figure they refer to as the Peacock Angel.

The article said: "After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the Sharia among the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations.

"This large-scale enslavement of mushrik (polytheist) families is probably the first since the abandonment of this Sharia law."

Dabiq said that, while "people of the book", such as Christians or Jews, could pay a tax or convert, the Yazidis could not do this.

Several Yazidi women and girls who have escaped captivity have claimed that they were sold to Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria.

Human Rights Watch recently produced a report including the testimony of a woman who said she saw IS fighters buying girls.