Iraq crisis : IS massacred Yazidi villagers
16 Aug BBC
Militants in northern Iraq have massacred at least 80 men from the
Yazidi faith in a village and abducted women and children.
Islamic State (IS) fighters entered Kocho, 45km (30 miles) from
Sinjar, on Friday afternoon, reportedly telling men to convert to Islam
or die.The group's atrocities against non-Sunni Muslims have shocked the
international community into action.In New York, the UN Security Council
imposed sanctions on IS members.
In another development, the US military said two of its drones had
attacked and destroyed two vehicles identified as belonging to IS near
Sinjar on Friday morning, after receiving reports from Kurdish forces
that the militants were attacking civilians in the village of
Kawju.Kurdish officials confirmed the attack on Kocho after it was
reported by Yazidi activists based in Washington.They arrived in
vehicles and they started their killing this afternoon," senior Kurdish
official Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters news agency.The killings took
place over the space of an hour, said a Yazidi MP, Mahama Khalil, who
reportedly spoke to survivors.A resident of a nearby village said an IS
fighter from the same area had given him details of the bloodshed.
"He told me that the Islamic State had spent five days trying to
persuade villagers to convert to Islam and that a long lecture was
delivered about the subject today," said the villager.He then said the
men were gathered and shot dead.
The women and girls were probably taken to [the city of] Tal Afar
because that is where the foreign fighters are." Hadi Pir, a Yazidi
activist and member of the Yazidi Crisis Management Team in the US, also
said a deadline to convert had been given to the villagers.
The villagers were assembled at Kocho's only school, after which the
men were shot, the activists said. Remaining villagers were then put on
buses for an unknown destination.
IS-led violence has driven an estimated 1.2 million Iraqis from their
homes. Whole communities of Yazidis and Christians have been forced to
flee in the north, along with Shia Iraqis, whom IS do not regard as true
Muslims.Separately, fighting flared up on Friday in the mainly Sunni
Anbar province, west of Baghdad, parts of which have been under IS
control.Some leaders of Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority have said they may
work against the militants in cooperation with Iraq's new Prime
Minister, Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is tasked with restoring order.
The mainly Shia Muslim government is locked in a fight with IS since
the group led an insurrection in the north this summer, making the city
of Mosul the capital of a self-declared state which extends into Syria.
Yazidi and Christian people in northern Iraq have faced persecution
by the jihadists, prompting US-led air strikes and aid drops and calls
for other Western states to arm opponents of IS.Meeting in New York, the
UN Security Council made six people associated with IS or the
Syria-based Nusra Front subject to an international travel ban, asset
freeze and arms embargo.Backers of the two groups may also face
sanctions, they said.
At an emergency EU meeting in Brussels on Friday, the 28
member-states were left to decide individually whether they would arm
Iraq's Kurds, the main opponent of IS in the north.The UK said it would
"consider favourably" any request to send arms to the Kurds, while the
Czech government said it would be in a position to start deliveries of
munitions by the end of the month.Germany is legally prevented from
arming countries involved in conflict, but Foreign Minister Frank-Walter
Steinmeier said he would go to the limit of "what is legally and
politically possible" to help the Kurds and he will travel to Iraq
shortly.
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