Reports 300 Yazidi executed

[JihadiJohn]

Reports 300 Yazidi executed

AAP
May 3, 2015, 9:03 am

Islamic State militants have executed captured members of Iraq's minority Yazidi community, Yazidi and Iraqi groups say, amid conflicting reports about the exact number of the victims.

The Yazidi Progress Party said the extremist militia had killed more than 300 Yazidis on Friday in the town of Tal Afar near the Islamic State-controlled northern city of Mosul.

Iraq's non-governmental Human Rights Commission meanwhile put the figure of the executed Yazidis in Tal Afar at around 70.

Qulu Sanjiri, a member of the commission, said that at least 3,000 Yazidis were still in jihadists' captivity.

"We call on the Iraqi government and friends to step in to stop bloodshed and the killing of the innocent people," he told a press conference in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

The allegations about executed Yazidis could not be independently verified.

The Yazidis, followers of an ancient faith, are regarded by Islamic State as infidels.

Islamic State has reportedly massacred an unknown number of Yazidis and raped captive female Yazidies since the al Qaeda splinter militia seized large territory in northern Iraq last year.

In December, Kurdish Peshmerga forces ended a months-long siege by Islamic State on the mostly Yazidi town of Sinjar in north-western Iraq.

Several mass graves have since been found in the area containing remains of Yazidis believed to have been executed by radical jihadists.

Iraqi government troops, backed by local paramilitaries and US-led airstrikes, have in recent months stepped up fight to dislodge the militants from their northern and western strongholds.