Cannon Andrew White claims the beheadings took place in a Christian enclave close to Baghdad which has been recently overrun by ISIS.

Cannon White, who has been ordered by the Archbishop of Canterbury to leave Iraq for his own safety, is one of only a handful of Christian leaders in the country.

He said: “we were in Baghdad, there were bombs and shootings and our people were being killed, so many of our people fled back to Nineveh, their traditional home.

“It was safer, but then one day, ISIS came in and they hounded all of them out. They killed huge numbers, they chopped their children in half, they chopped their heads off, and they moved north and it was so terrible what happened.”

He says that ISIS forced Christians to convert to Islam. “They said to one man, an adult, ‘Either you say the words of conversion to Islam or we kill all your children’.

Speaking to the Orthodox Christian Network, he said: “Islamic State turned up and said to the children, you say the words that you will follow Islam.

“The children, all under 15, four of them, said no. They chopped all their heads off. How do you respond to that? You just cry.”