Iraq officials say six gay men - at least two of them in their teens - have been killed there in the past week.

"Two gay men were killed in Baghdad's Sadr City slum … and police said they had found the bodies of four more after clerics urged a crackdown on a perceived spread of homosexuality," reports Reuters.

There may be even more victims of Iraqi militias. Some LGBT Iraqi websites are showing photos of other bodies thought to be "victims of police and death squads" who were killed because of "their sexual identity."

Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell recently told the UK's Guardian newspaper about the plight of Iraq's LGBT citzens: "Queers are being shot dead in their homes, streets and workplaces. Even suspected gay children are being murdered.

"The killers claim to be doing these assassinations at the behest of the 'democratic' Iraqi government, in order to eradicate what they see as immoral, unIslamic behaviour," he explains.

"This programme of targeted murders has one aim, according to the death squads: the total eradication of all queers from Iraq. It is, in effect, a form of sexual cleansing. The killers boast that most 'sodomites' have already been eliminated."

The website 'Iraqi LGBT' has been set up to support the Iraq's gay citizens, and a secret network of safe houses and escape routes is saving them from execution by Islamist death squads. Find out more here.