Another Human Tragedy

"It is a humanitarian tragedy. Men were executed in the streets, women were kidnapped and raped. When we are captured, they kill us immediately, and they take our women."
Housam Salim, head, Solidarity & Brotherhood Yezidi Organization, Iraq

"As we speak there is genocide taking place against the Yezidis. My people are being slaughtered."
"Our women are being used as concubines and sold in the markets. Please save us. Save us."
Vian Dakheel, Yezidi member, Iraq parliament

"[The militant policy of] either convert or be killed is a very powerful message."
"This group [Islamic State] is going to be creating more refugee flows as it moves in different directions within the multi-ethnic structure of Iraq."
Theodore Karasik, Institute for Near East & Gulf Military Analysis, Dubai

Surrounded by Sunni militant fighters, tens of thousands of Yazidis risk dying of thirst

The Islamic State, triumphant with the weapons they easily seized from the Iraqi army as it abandoned its posts and fled before the Islamist jihadis, and flush with the treasury they looted from Mosul's banks, the Islamic State has seized oil fields in Iraq, and the sales of the crude oil extracted from those oil fields are further replenishing a burgeoning treasury with their sales on the black market of a product the world is hungry for.

The Islamists are threatening to take possession of dams near Mosul and Haditha. The potential for IS flooding vulnerable cities like Mosul and Baghdad should they choose to take that direction also looms in the near future. Thousands of men and women from Iraq's Yezidi sect fled into the northern mountains anxious to escape execution and rape as the terrorists seize ever more territory. In their zeal for conquest committing the atrocities they have become infamous for.

Peshmerga troops who held towns in the Sinjar area for years were defeated by militants on Sunday

The Kurdish Peshmerga whose courage and resilience made them seem impermeable to the IS advance has now suffered a number of ignominious defeats with rumour that they simply ran out of ammunition and had little option but to retreat. Unlike the Iraqi military which had more than ample ammunition and ran out of resolve and commitment to defend their country from the jihadi hordes.

The Islamic State rampages through Iraq and there is no force to stop them. More lately seizing predominantly Kurdish towns in the north, including the Yezidi town of Sinjar. The Islamists intimidate all in their advance with beheadings and humanitarian ravages too savage in their nature to believe, but the evidence is there in raw and red carnage.

An estimated 30,000 Yezidi families are in flight, with 70 children already dead of dehydration on their march to safety. Those in the mountains are left without food and water and their plight is desperate with no aid in sight. It has been rumoured that the United States has conducted several aerial strikes against Islamic State forces, hoping to relieve the pressure on ordinary Iraqis and bring them some respite from the terror.

In Kurdish Dahuk Yazidi families have received food handouts

 

In one video posted on the Facebook page of Ezidi Press, a Yezidi father speaks of the daughter he left behind: "They were close, and I drove the car so fast. Our little daughter fell off the vehicle. I wanted to stop, but then decided to save the ones with me at least", explained Haydar Ibrahim Salih of his very personal tragedy that will haunt him now for however long he lives.