A major evangelical free church in Sweden is preparing to use drones to drop thousands of Bibles into areas of Iraq controlled by Islamic State.

The Livets Ord (Word of Life) church in Uppsala in the north of Sweden has said it will use drones flying at high altitude to release thousands of small, electronic Bibles into Iraq.

"The Bibles are the size of pill boxes and have a display. They require no electricity, but work on their own," the church's mission director Christian Åkerhielm told Swedish broadcaster SVT, according to the newspaper The Local.

"Our ambition is to pass on the hope and love of the Christian gospel to a population living in closed areas where they are being denied human rights," the Livets Ord said on its Swedish homepage.

The church said that another organisation in the area would be carrying out the operation, but did not name the other group. "We start our project in a few weeks and hope to drop thousands of Bibles," it said.

A representative of the church confirmed to Christian Today that the plan will go ahead.

Livets Ord is the leading charismatic church in Sweden, and seen as in line with the Pentecostal movement in the US. It was founded in the 1980s, and is often criticised in secular Swedish society for being like a "cult".

It runs a series of evangelical schools for children.

The current leader of the Christian Democrat party, Ebba Busch Thor, who is from Uppsala, attended one until she turned 16.

Another criticism levelled in the Swedish press has been that the church has made donations to Israel that have gone towards building illegal settlements in the West Bank.

The church's founders, Ulf and Birgitta Ekman, leftin 2014 to convert to Catholicism.

The church says on its website: "We believe in an unfailing and never-ending love, given to us by God. And together we try to spread that love to as many people as possible. Both globally and closer to where our home is, here in Uppsala."