The U.S. military has conducted new airstrikes against Islamic militants as reports say members of the group killed at least 90 male members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority in a northern village and kidnapped “dozens” of women and children.
A senior U.S. defense official said that U.S. surveillance drones saw evidence of the massacre of dozens of Yazidi men. The U.S. military later struck two militant targets, killing some of those involved in the killings, the source said.
The U.S. military said in a statement that the U.S. forces conducted the airstrikes on Islamic State vehicles in the village of Kawju. The village is located south of the village of Sinjar.
The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking ethnic and religious group which numbers in the hundreds of thousands in Iraq, has been persecuted in the north by Islamic State militants, with at least 500 killed prior to Friday’s news, according to Iraq’s human rights minister.
Sources told Fox News it appears residents in the village did not comply with the militants’ demands to convert to Islam.
“[Militants] arrived in vehicles and they started their killing this afternoon,” senior Kurdish official Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters. “We believe it’s because of their creed: convert or be killed.”
A Yazidi lawmaker and another senior Kurdish official also said the killings had taken place and that the women of the village were kidnapped.
The latest killings came just a day after President Obama said U.S.-led airstrikes had broken the siege by the militants against the minorities trapped on a mountain in northern Iraq. Obama made it clear the U.S. mission in the region is not over yet.
Iraqi and Yazidi leaders say the brutal Islamic State fighters have buried Yazidi men alive, killed children and kidnapped women to be slaves.
“We have striking evidence obtained from Yazidis fleeing Sinjar and some who escaped death, and also crime scene images that show indisputably that the gangs of the Islamic States have executed at least 500 Yazidis after seizing Sinjar,” Sudani told Reuters Sunday.
Sinjar is the ancient home of the Yazidis, but also one of several towns captured by the Sunni militants who view the community as “devil worshipers” and demand conversion to Islam under threat of death.
The Islamic State, which has declared a Sharia state caliphate in parts of Iraq andSyria, forced tens of thousands of Yazidis and Christians to flee their homes or face certain death.
The Yazidis, followers of an ancient religion derived from Zoroastrianism, are spread over northern Iraq and are part of the country’s Kurdish minority.
