IRAQ: Members of the Yazidi religious community arrive in Iraq's Kurdistan region after escaping an advance by Islamic State (IS) fighters

Record ID: 274622

  • Title: IRAQ: Members of the Yazidi religious community arrive in Iraq's Kurdistan region after escaping an advance by Islamic State (IS) fighters
  • Date: 14th August 2014
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) UNIDENTIFIED REFUGEE SAYING: "Firstly, we were shelled with 40 mortars by the Arabs of the area. We all fled the town. We don't want to live in Iraq anymore. If we return to Sinjar tomorrow, they will drive us out after three months. We want a place to live in outside Iraq."
  • Embargoed: 29th August 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iraq
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: Crime,Conflict,International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVAF2QFID997QP5AUBSNMAZH7O9C
  • Story Text: Taking shelter in a half-constructed building, dozens of Yazidi families on Thursday (August 14) were relieved to be finally away from danger.
    Men, women and children took refuge in the Kurdistan city of Duhok after walking for days, going through Syrian towns at the border then crossing back into Iraq through Feshkabour.
    Many of them spoke of the horrors and hardships they faced when they were trapped in Mount Sinjar after fleeing advancing Islamic State (IS) militants.

    "We were in the towns of Sinjar. When they came to us, we went to the mountain. We had neither water nor food. The sun is very hot. Children died of thirst in the middle of the way. Every person carried either two or three. I was accompanied with eleven. I carried four and climbed the mountain," said Khalid Kudhr.
    The Yazidis were just one of the communities fleeing their villages from advancing Islamic State fighters who drove looted armoured vehicles and fired machine guns and raised their black flag over towns across northwest Iraq in recent weeks.
    For many who fled to the craggy gullies of Mount Sinjar, helped by thinly lightly armed Kurdish Peshmerga warriors and some Yazidi guards, U.S. and Iraqi military airdrops of food and drinking water in the last five days came too late.
    The nightmare began when Islamic State forces shelled the town of Sinjar early last week and routed Kurdish fighters, sending thousands of people fleeing up the road to the mountain.

    "We fled to the mountain. We were trapped there for seven days. We left the old people behind. They took our money and possessions. If you go to the mountain, you can't walk because of the huge number of the dead people there," said one unidentified refugee.
    He added:
    "We were shelled with 40 mortars by the Arabs of the area. We all fled the town. We don't want to live in Iraq anymore. If we return to Sinjar tomorrow, they will drive us out after three months. We want a place to live in outside Iraq."
    On Thursday, security sources and a local official said Islamic State militants are massing near the Iraqi town of Qara Tappa, 122 km (73 miles) north of Baghdad, in an apparent bid to broaden their front with Kurdish Peshmerga fighters.
    The Sunni militants have made a dramatic push through the north to a position near Arbil, capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
    The movement around Qara Tappa suggests they are getting more confident and seeking to grab more territory closer to the capital after stalling in that region.
    Islamic State has also been using tunnels built by Saddam Hussein in the 1990s to secretly move fighters, weapons and supplies from strongholds in western Iraq to towns just south of Baghdad.
    The group, made up of Iraqis, other Arabs and foreign fighters has threatened to march on Baghdad, part of its ambition to redraw the map of the Middle East and impose its radical version of Islam.
    The governor of Iraq's Sunni heartland province of Anbar said he has secured a promise of U.S. support in a battle against the Islamic State, reviving an alliance that helped thwart an earlier Sunni militant threat, from al Qaeda.
    The Islamic State, disowned by al Qaeda as too radical after it took control of large parts of Syria, capitalised on its Syrian territorial gains and sectarian tensions in Iraq to gain control of Falluja and Anbar's capital Ramadi early this year.
    The White House said the United States and its allies were considering setting up airlifts and safe land corridors to rescue people, including many from the Yazidi sect stranded on the arid heights of Mount Sinjar near the Syrian border.
    But a U.S. assessment team sent to Mount Sinjar on Wednesday (August 13) found the situation better than expected, and the Pentagon said an evacuation mission was "far less likely".
    The U.S. team found fewer civilians than expected and their condition was better than previously believed, the Pentagon said, crediting humanitarian air drops, U.S. air strikes on Islamic State targets and the ability of Yazidis to evacuate the mountain over recent nights.
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