ISLAMIC State (Isis) forces have denied food and medicine to “hundreds of thousands” of people in Iraq and Syria, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria said today.

The report came out as the terrorist group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who styles himself caliph of all Muslims, ordered it to start minting its own gold, silver and copper coinage to “change the tyrannical monetary system.”

Critics have pointed out that Isis currently lacks the quantities of precious metals needed for its new Islamic dinar, with its highest-denomination five-dinar coin reported to contain 21.25 grams of 21-carat gold — making it worth almost £450.

The currency is part of Isis’s efforts to present itself as a state rather than a terrorist militia, alongside what the UN-backed commission called a “calculated use of public brutality and indoctrination to ensure the submission of communities under its control.”