Middle East News

ISIS Attacks Yazidi Village: Massacres Men, Abducts Women

Islamic extremists attacked a Yazidi village in northern Iraq on Friday, killing dozens of men and took at a hundred of women captive, CNN reported.

Members of the extremist group Islamic State (IS), formally known as Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, attacked the village of Kojo, 12 miles away from Mt. Sinjar, where tens of thousands of Yazidis and other minority groups were also trapped by the rebels.

According to the report, a Kurdish official and Yazidi leader said more than 80 men were slaughtered and 100 women were abducted by the IS fighters after surrounding it for days. The women were then taken to IS-controlled cities of Mosul and Tal Afar, also in northern Iraq.

“They arrived in vehicles and they started their killing this afternoon,” senior Kurdish official Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters. “We believe it’s because of their creed: convert or be killed.”

A villager told Reuters a, IS fighter accounted the attack to the village: it was surrounded for five days, persuading them to convert to Islam.

“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 Tal Afar because that is where the foreign fighters are.”

However, the account cannot be verified.

More than 500 members of the Yazidi minority sect were killed by IS fighters in their attack in the north. Some were even buried alive, including women and children, Iraq human rights minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said. At least 300 women, on the other hand, were taken as slaves.

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