Islamic State Militant Killing + Rape Sparks Mass Exodus in Northern Iraq Mountains

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Militant Slaughter Sparks Mass Exodus in Northern Iraq Mountains By Glen Carey and Ladane Nasseri Aug 6, 2014 11:31 PM GMT+0800 31 Comments Email Print <a href="javascript<b></b>:void(0)">Speed

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Photographer: Emrah Yorulmaz/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images Iraqi Yazidis flee from Sinjar. The militant advance on Sinjar and other towns in the area displaced as many as 200,000 people, according to the United Nations Mission in Iraq. Close

Iraqi Yazidis flee from Sinjar. The militant advance on Sinjar and other towns in the... Read More


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Open Photographer: Emrah Yorulmaz/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images Iraqi Yazidis flee from Sinjar. The militant advance on Sinjar and other towns in the area displaced as many as 200,000 people, according to the United Nations Mission in Iraq.







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Thousands of men and women from Iraq’s Yezidi religious group have fled into the northern mountains to escape execution and rape after militants from an al-Qaeda breakaway group seized more territory, community leaders said.

“It is a humanitarian tragedy,” Housam Salim, the head of the Solidarity and Brotherhood Yezidi Organization, said in a phone interview today from an area of Mosul controlled by Kurdish forces. “Men were executed in the streets, women were kidnapped and raped. When we are captured, they kill us immediately, and they take our women.”

The attacks on the minority group are the latest evidence of the trauma that has gripped Iraq after Islamic State extended its rampage through the country this week. The jihadist group’s army is now targeting dams whose destruction could flood areas near Baghdad and Mosul.

Militants have seized predominantly Kurdish towns in the north this week, including the Yezidi town of Sinjar. The group, which has used beheadings to intimidate people in their advance across Iraq and Syria, consider Yezidis, a community whose faith includes features of the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism, as apostates under their fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.
30,000 Families

“As we speak there is genocide taking place against the Yezidis,” Vian Dakheel, a Yezidi member of Iraq’s parliament, said in a impassioned speech yesterday. “My people are being slaughtered.”

As many as 30,000 families are fleeing, and at least 70 children have died of dehydration during the exodus, Dakheel said. The United Nations children’s agency said yesterday that as many as 25,000 children are now stranded in mountains surrounding Sinjar.

“Our women are being used as concubines and sold in the markets,” Dakheel said. “Please save us. Save us.”

She collapsed at the end of the speech, falling among the men and women standing next to her, according to a video of her address that was posted on YouTube.

About 1,000 families were able to escape from Sinjar to other Yezidi areas such as Shikhan and Saria, while 250 families escaped to Syria with the help of Kurdish security forces, Salim said.

The militant policy of “either convert or be killed is a very powerful message,” Theodore Karasik, director of research at the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai, said in a phone interview. “This group is going to be creating more refugee flows as it moves in different directions within the multi-ethnic structure of Iraq.”
Oil Fields

Iraq’s population is one of the most religiously and ethnically diverse in the Middle-East. As well as the majority Arabs and Kurds, minority ethnic groups include Assyrians, Armenians and Turkmens. Religiously, a majority are Shiite Muslims and about a third Sunnis, while Christians make up about 4 percent of Iraqis, and Yezidis are among the remaining 2 percent, according to Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Strengthened with weapons seized from the Iraqi army, the Islamic State, which was previously known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, has seized some oil fields in Iraq. It’s also threatening to take dams near Mosul and Haditha, which are separated by about 350 kilometers (200 miles). Kurdish forces are battling to retake Sinjar from the militants.

The militant advance on Sinjar and other towns in the area displaced as many as 200,000 people, according to the United Nations Mission in Iraq.
Air Support

Kurdish forces started “offensive attacks” to stop the militant advance, Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish Regional Government, said on Aug. 4, according to a statement published today. “We will not relinquish an inch of the territory of Kurdistan and we will defend Sinjar.”

Iraqi financial markets declined amid the latest clashes. The ISX General Index of shares dropped 1.5 percent to the lowest level since 2010. The benchmark government bond due January 2028 fell to the lowest since March, with the yield rising 9 basis points to 7.41 percent.

The Iraqi government has deployed its air force to support Kurdish forces in the Mosul and Sinjar areas, General Hamed al-Maliki, an air force commander, said today in an interview with Al-Sumaria TV.
The strikes “caused them great losses,” he said. “Our pilots estimate that they killed more than 180 militants.”

In Sinjar, where part of The Exorcist was filmed about 40 years ago, the fighting between Kurdish forces and militants has pitched back and forth over the past few days. There were no clashes today, with militants still in control, Salim said.

“The killing and the kidnapping continues,” he said.
Humanitarian Assistance

Those fleeing the militants are in dire need of humanitarian assistance, the United Nations children’s agency, or UNICEF, said yesterday on its website.

“These children from the Yezidi minority died as a direct consequence of violence, displacement and dehydration over the past two days,” said Marzio Babille, a representative from UNICEF.
Unconfirmed videos posted on social media websites give a glimpse of what the exodus has looked like after militants seized territory.


In one, posted on the Facebook page of Ezidi Press, a Yezidi father recounts how in his haste to flee, he left his daughter behind to save a greater number of his family members. “They were close, and I drove the car so fast,” Haydar Ibrahim Salih said. “Our little daughter fell off the vehicle. I wanted to stop but then decided to save the ones with me at least.”

(An earlier version of this story corrected the spelling of lawmaker Dakheel’s name in the fifth paragraph.)
To contact the reporters on this story: Glen Carey in Riyadh at [email protected]; Ladane Nasseri in Dubai at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at [email protected] Ben Holland


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