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| Iraq |
| Iraq's Yazidi minority flees militant threat |
| 2014-08-05 |
| [DAWN] Tens of thousands from Iraq's minority Yazidi community have fled their homes after Sunni forces of Evil captured their towns in the latest offensive to expand the territory of their self-styled caliphate. As Kurdish fighters struggled to hold back the onslaught of the Islamic State forces of Evil on Iraq's north, some 40,000 Yazidis, a minority religious sect, fled the northern towns of Sinjar and Zumar, said Jawhar Ali Begg, a front man for the community. "Thousands of Yazidi people have been killed," he said. The krazed killer group gave the Yazidis, who follow an ancient religion with links to Zoroastrianism, an ultimatum to convert to Islam, pay a tax or face death, Begg added. Iraq is facing its worst crisis since the 2006 civil war when the Islamic State group, an al Qaeda breakaway faction with a strong presence in Syria, captured large swaths of land in the country's west and north in a lightning offensive earlier this year. The United Nations ...a formerly good idea gone bad... said last month that more than 500,000 people have been displaced by the violence since June, bringing the total this year to 1.4 million, including more than 230,000 Syrian refugees. The group drove ethnic and religious minorities out of Iraq's second-largest city, djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... , and attacked mosques and shrines, claiming they contradicted strict Islamic teachings. Kurdish forces, known as the peshmerga, have been battling with the forces of Evil for control of several towns stretching between the province of Nineveh and the Kurdish Iraqi province of Dahuk. At least 25 Kurdish fighters were killed in festivities with the forces of Evil on Sunday, and another 120 were maimed, according to Muhssin Mohammed, a Dahuk-based doctor. A statement Monday by the Islamic State said it had captured dozens of Kurdish prisoners during the festivities and seized "large number" of weapons. The authenticity of the statement could not be verified, but it was posted on a website used by the group. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Is it just me or does anyone else wonder why the UN hasn't done anything except count refugees? |
| Posted by: Bill Clinton 2014-08-05 23:45 |