The Telegraph reports:
Tens of thousands of members of Iraqi religious minority groups driven from their homes for fear of the jihadist group Islamic State are dying of thirst and heat on a desert mountainside in the north of the country, according to the United Nations and human rights groups.
Some 40 children have already died from the heat and dehydration, the UN children’s organisation Unicef says, while upwards of 40,000 more are sheltering in the bare mountains, without food or water or access to supplies. It says 25,000 children may be stranded.
Hundreds of adults, particularly men but also women and children, are already feared to have been killed or abducted by the group, which now surrounds their hiding place.
Most of the refugees, who fled their home city of Sinjar when it was seized by Islamic State at the weekend, are members of the Yazidi community. The Yazidis are an offshoot from Zoroastrianism and the “Peacock Angel” at the centre of their beliefs is associated by some Sunni Muslims with Satan.
This makes them especially vulnerable to the sectarian attacks practised by Islamic State, which refers to them as “devil-worshippers”.
The group’s social media feeds, often used to trumpet its atrocities to instil fear in its enemies, have already begun to show executions said to be of Yazidi men.
“We are being slaughtered. Our entire religion is being wiped off the face of the earth. I am begging you, in the name of humanity,” a Yazidi MP, Vian Dakhil, was quoted as saying in parliament, as she broke down in tears.
There were also said to be Christians and Muslims among the refugees in the mountains, and the shortage of food was forcing them to hunt for wild game.
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