Islamists massacre Yazidi villagers in Iraq

Islamists have massacred villagers in northern Iraq where hundred per cent residents were from minority Yazidi sect. The jihadists not only killed the males of Yazidi sect in the village, they also raped women and abducted young women and children, reports say. Witnesses said the Islamic State (IS) fighters entered Kocho, a village 45 kilometres (30 miles) from Sinjar, on Friday afternoon, telling men to convert to Islam or die. The Sunni fighters killed at least 80 young men from the Yazidi community and shot them to death. Their atrocities against members of the minority communities and non-Sunnis in Iraq have shocked the international community into action. Meanwhile, in Iraqi Kurdistan, the militants were attacking and indiscriminately killing civilians in the village of Kawju.
                                                                                                           ‘Convert or die’
Kurdish officials said the Islamists arrived in vehicles and they started their killing this (Friday) afternoon. The killings took place over the space of an hour, said a Yazidi MP, Mahama Khalil, who reportedly spoke to survivours of Kawju. A resident of a nearby village said an IS fighter from the same area had given him details of the bloodshed. ‘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 raped and later taken to (the city of) Tal Afar because that is where the foreign fighters are. The Sunni fighters have driven an estimated 1.2 million Iraqis from their homes. Whole communities of Yazidis and Christians have been forced to flee in the north, along with Shia Iraqis, whom they do not regard as true Muslims, report agencies.