Iraqi ethnic minorities flee in droves from violence

Sandy Thamir, a 20-year-old disabled woman, is among the thousands of Iraqi Christians taking refuge at St. Joseph Church in Ankawa.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraq's religious and ethnic minorities, faced with death threats and forced conversions, have begun their exodus from their regional homelands since Islamic State militants seized their towns and villages in northern Iraq early in June.

Thamir's mother, in her 50s, wears an expression of exhaust as she watches over her daughter, who suffers from brain damage.

"I might lose her. She was never so bad. It seems the trip was so hard for her and the atmosphere here is different from back home. It is too hot here and too busy," Thamir's mother says in tears as she weeps.

Here at St. Joseph Church in Ankawa, just north of Arbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdish region, the basic necessities of life are hard to come by as people continue to flee in droves from the violence.

Amid this crisis, Thamir's mother pleads for help to all who will listen, saying she lacks access to water, food and medicine for her daughter.

It was the sounds of live gunfire close to the family home that drove Thamir and her mother from their hometown of Bartella near Mosul. News of the extremist militant takeover of the town spread fast as neighbors told Thamir's mother the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, who are battling the Sunni insurgents, withdrew from the area.

Soon after the middle-aged woman found herself carrying her disabled daughter on her back, walking for four hours until at dawn they finally reached a checkpoint manned by Kurdish security forces.

"I was holding her, and after a while she started moaning from pain, but was forced to keep on walking," she said.

Thamir and her mother managed with the help of a Kurdish driver to arrive to the Ankawa church to join other Christian refugees, but Thamir's condition worsened after the trip left them without any basic supplies, crushing Thamir's mother's hopes that fleeing would keep them safe and secure.

On Thursday, Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary- General for Iraq Gyorgy Busztin said he was gravely concerned about the serious deterioration of security in northern Iraq and the growing humanitarian crisis as up to 400,000 civilians fled the conflict areas in recent days.

Many of those displaced or directly affected by the violence belong to Iraq's minority religious and ethnic communities - including Yezidi, Christians, Shabak, Turkomen and others -- and with the conflict ongoing, many more civilians were expected to flee the violence as it nears their towns and villages.

"The UN continues to receive reports that members of minority communities are being subjected to serious human rights violations by ISIL (Islamic State members) including murder, kidnappings, forced conversions, physical and sexual assault, and the looting and destruction of property and places of religious and cultural significance," Busztin said.

Hundreds of Yazidi minority members had been killed because they refused to convert to Islam, Luqman al-Sinjari, a Yazidi journalist who lives in Arbil, said. Luqman's family had lived in Sinjar and his family members had fled the town to the nearby mountain.

"I can confirm that some 77 Yazidi people that I personally know were executed by the Islamic militant and buried in Syria in an area located near the border. Thirty-three women and a 12-year old child were among them, including 22 Yazidis from one family," Sinjari said, citing reports from Kurdish officials and witnesses from his own family members in Sinjar mountain.

The militants also reportedly kidnapped up to 500 Yazidi women, taking them to bases in Syria and in Mosul, he claimed without giving further details.

Al-Sinjari said his relative Salo Rashid left his town with some 200 Yazidis and hid Sinjar mountain earlier in the week when the Islamic militant stormed their town, adding some 20 Yazidis have died of thirst and hunger as they linger without basic aid near the mountain.

The Yazidi minority is primarily Kurdish. The religion of the Yazidis incorporates elements of many faiths, as a result of some of their beliefs and the mystery surrounding their religion, many Muslims and non-Muslims have come to see Yazidis as "infidels." This has led to violent attacks by extremist Islamist groups against the minority.

There are about 600,000 Yazidis remaining in Iraq with roughly 80 percent of them living in the towns of Sinjar and Bashika in Nineveh province.

After the advance of the Islamic State militant in northern Iraq, some 150,000 Yazidis, fearing the insurgents' atrocities, fled their homes in the town of Sinjar and nearby villages and went to the nearby Sinjar mountain.

Sinjar Mountain is a single ridge of some 75 km located in north-western Iraq and stretches from the town of Sinjar, 100 km west of Nineveh's provincial capital Mosul to the border with Syria.

Hundreds of Yazidis are estimated to have died so far from hunger, thirst and the heat of the scorching Iraqi summer, including more than 100 young children under ten years old, al- Sinjari said.

"The situation is very serious for my people in the mountain and the time is running. Very soon we will witness en masse deaths if the world does not act quickly," he said.

U.S. planes and Iraqi helicopters have sent some flights packed with aid to drop food and water supplies to the crowds of Yazidis stranded on the mountain, but the aid is hardly sufficient to meet the total needs of the thousands of people who are spread out across the dozens of valley caves of the tall mountain.

On Saturday evening, the U.S. military conducted its third airdrop of food and water for thousands of Iraqi people threatened by Islamic State militant group, the U.S. Central Command said.

"This airdrop was conducted from multiple airbases within the U. S. Central Command area of responsibility and included one C-17 and two C-130 cargo aircraft that together dropped a total of 72 bundles of supplies," the command said in a statement.

To date, in coordination with the government of Iraq, U.S. military aircraft have delivered more than 52,000 meals and more than 10,600 gallons of fresh drinking water, it added.

Two days after U.S. jets attacked positions of extremist militant who besieged the Yazidi civilians in the mountain with little food and water, the British and French on Sunday joined the efforts to aid the stranded people from starvation. Meanwhile, a Syrian Kurdish militia named the People's Protection Units (YPG), carried out a joint operation with the Peshmerga forces to open a safe path for the Yazidis stranded in Sinjar Mountain and managed to evacuate some 20,000 Yazidis, but still the mountain's terrain makes it difficult to evacuate all the people facing starvation, a Kurdish security source told Xinhua.