More than 1200 Yazidis killed by Islamic State since 2014
Yazidi migrants in northern Iraq.
Erbil (IraqiNews.com) Islamic State militants killed 1293 members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority since they took over Iraqi territories in 2014, an official Kurdish report has said.
A statistic released by the Kurdistan Region Government’s Endowments and Religious Affairs Ministry said Islamic State’s massacres of Yazidis forced nearly 360.000 of the religious minority to flee their areas, with 90.000 of those heading abroad.
IS kidnapped 6417 Yazidis since 2014, the report added. Those include 1102 women and 1655 children, the statistics show.
The calamity rendered 2645 kids parentless, including 220 whose parents are still under IS captivity, the ministry revealed.
Authorities have run into 43 mass graves of Yazidi victims slaughtered by IS, according to the statistic.
Yazidi member of the Iraqi parliament, Hejji Kandour al-Sheikh, had stated that tens of thousands of Yazidis had failed to return to their home regions due to “political conflicts among parties trying to control those regions. He also noted that 2000 women and children of his community had been transferred by the militants to the town of Tal Afar, west of Nineveh, and the Syrian city of Raqqa, the group’s base there.
Iraq’s judicial authorities had formed a special panel to probe massacres of Yazidis.
Islamic State militants considered Yazidis, whose beliefs combine elements of several Middle Eastern religions, devil worshipers. The United Nations had recognized IS actions against the sect as crimes against humanity.