Iraq: ISIS Kills 500 Yazidis, Buries Some Alive Incl. Women And Children

ISIS killed 500 Yazidis, buried some alive incl women and children – Iraq (RT, Aug 10, 2014):

Extremists from the Islamic State have killed at least 500 people, including women and children, Iraqi officials said. Some of the victims were buried alive.

The killings reported by Iraqi Human Rights Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to Reuters add to a long list of atrocities reportedly committed by the radical group in Iraq and neighboring Syria, where it wants to create a caliphate.

“We have striking evidence obtained from Yazidis fleeing [their ancient home city of] Sinjar and some who escaped death, and also crime scene images that show indisputably that the gangs of the Islamic State have executed at least 500 Yazidis after seizing Sinjar,” Sudani said.

“Some of the victims, including women and children were buried alive in scattered mass graves in and around Sinjar,” he added. Some 300 women were kidnapped as slaves, he said.

Yazidis are one of many Iraqi minorities persecuted by the Islamic State, which adheres to a fundamentalist branch of Sunni Islam. The militants offer people living in territories they control to either convert to their faith or face death.

At least 300 Yazidi families in the villages of Koja, Hatimiya, and Qaboshi, which were surrounded by the Islamists, are being forced into converting, witnesses reported on Saturday.

The threat posed by the militant offensive sent an estimated 130,000 of Iraqis, many of them Yazidis, fleeing for their lives. They are seeking refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan, where Kurd militias have been battling with the Islamic State for weeks.

According to UN reports, at least 40,000 Yazidis have been stranded in several locations on Mount Sinjar in north of Iraq, where food and water are scarce.

The refugees rely on airdrops for survival and the hardship has already claimed dozens of lives, especial of children.

Islamic State kills at least 500 from Iraq’s Yazidi minority: Baghdad (, Aug 10, 2014):

Islamic State militants have killed at least 500 members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority in northern Iraq, burying some of their victims alive and kidnapping hundreds of women, a Baghdad government minister said on Sunday.

The insurgents’ advance through northern Iraq has forced tens of thousands to flee, threatened the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region and provoked the first U.S. air strikes in the area since Washington withdrew troops from Iraq in 2011.

Iraq’s human rights minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani told Reuters that he had evidence that the Sunni militants had thrown the Yazidi dead into mass graves, adding that some of those buried alive were women and children. About 300 women had been forced into slavery, he said.

President Barack Obama said on Saturday that U.S. air strikes had destroyed arms that the Islamic State, which has captured swaths of northern Iraq since June, could have used against the Iraqi Kurds, but he warned that there was no quick fix for the crisis that threatens to tear Iraq apart.

U.S. military aircraft have also dropped relief supplies to tens of thousands of Yazidis who have collected on the desert top of Mount Sinjar seeking shelter from the insurgents, who had ordered them to convert to Islam by Sunday or die.

Sudani said news of killings had come from people who had escaped from nearby Sinjar, the ancient home of the Yazidis and one of the towns captured by the Sunni militants who view the community as “devil worshipers”.

“We have striking evidence obtained from Yazidis fleeing Sinjar and some who escaped death, and also crime scene images that show indisputably that the gangs of the Islamic States have executed at least 500 Yazidis after seizing Sinjar,” Sudani said. “Some of the victims, including women and children were buried alive in scattered mass graves in and around Sinjar.”

Speaking before U.S. warplanes struck militant targets for the second straight day, Obama said it would take more than bombs to restore stability, and criticized Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Shi’ite-led government for failing to empower Iraq’s Sunnis.

France joined the calls for Iraq’s feuding leaders to form an inclusive government capable of countering the militants. “Iraq is in need of a broad unity government, and all Iraqis should feel that they are represented in this government,” Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.

“All Iraqis should feel they are represented to take part in this battle against terrorism,” he told a news conference with his Iraqi counterpart in Baghdad in comments translated into Arabic on state television.

Maliki’s critics say his sectarian agenda prompted heavily-armed Sunni tribes to join the insurgency. But Maliki, serving in a caretaker capacity since an inconclusive election in April, has defied calls by Sunnis, Kurds, fellow Shi’ites, regional power broker Iran and Iraq’s top cleric to step aside for a less divisive leader.

WAKE UP CALL

The pressure from France came a day after Obama described the upheaval in the north as a “wake up call” to Iraqis who have slipped back into sectarian bloodshed not seen since a civil war peaked in 2006-2007.

Nearly every day police report kidnappings, bombings and execution-style killings in many cities, towns and villages.

The Islamic State, which sees Shi’ites as infidels who deserve to be killed, has met little resistance. Thousands of U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers fled when its Arab and foreign fighters swept through northern Iraq from eastern Syria in June.

The collapse of the Iraqi army prompted Kurds and Shi’ite militias to step in, with limited success.

The Sunni militants routed Kurds in their latest advance with tanks, artillery, mortars and vehicles seized from fleeing soldiers, calling into question their reputation as fearsome “those who confront death” warriors.

Iranian-trained Shi’ite militias may stand a better chance than the Kurds but they are accused of kidnapping and killing Sunnis, playing into the hands of the Islamic State, which also controls a large chunk of western Iraq.

After hammering Kurdish forces last week, the militants are just 30 minutes’ drive from Arbil, the Iraqi Kurdish capital, which until now has been spared the sectarian bloodshed that has scarred other parts of Iraq for a decade.

The possibility of an attack on Arbil has prompted foreigners working for oil companies to leave the city and Kurds to stock up on AK-47 assault rifles at the arms bazaar.

In their latest sweep through the north, the Sunni insurgents routed Kurdish forces and seized a fifth oil field, several more villages and the biggest dam in Iraq – which could give them the ability to flood cities or cut off water and power supplies – hoisting their black flags up along the way.

After spending more than $2 trillion on its war in Iraq and losing thousands of soldiers, the United States must now find ways to tackle a group that is even more hardline than al-Qaeda and has threatened to march on Baghdad.

Iraqi security and intelligence officials told Reuters Islamic State fighters based in the western cities of Falluja and Ramadi have been using tunnels built by former dictator Saddam Hussein in the 1990s to evade U.N. weapons inspectors to sneak across to towns just south of the capital.

2 thoughts on “Iraq: ISIS Kills 500 Yazidis, Buries Some Alive Incl. Women And Children”

  1. Taking 300 women as slaves? Convert or die?
    This sounds like the days of Ancient Rome. These people sound as if they have escaped the last 1500 centuries………

    Reply

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