MOSCOW, August 10 (RIA Novosti) – At least 20,000 people, besieged by Islamic State militants on a mountain in northern Iraq have fled to Syria and then safely returned to Iraq, Agence France-Presse reported Sunday.
Earlier reports said that more than 50,000 refugees from a city previously seized by IS rebels have been trapped in the mountains and deprived of water. Extremists hampered humanitarian assistance deliveries. Some people started dying of dehydration.
Vian Dakhil, a representative of the Yezidi minority, said that 20,000 to 30,000 had managed to escape and were now in Iraqi Kurdistan.
According to an official from Iraq's autonomous Kurdish government at the Fishkhabur crossing point, some 30,000 people, most of them Yezidis had returned to Iraq via Syria.
Yezidis are a part of the Kurds ethnic minority, who live mainly in Iraq and Turkey, as well as in Iran, Syria and the South Caucasus. Yezidis have their own religion based on the elements of heathenism, ancient Indo-Iranic beliefs, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Earlier Islamic militants threatened to kill all Yezidis if they did not convert into Islam.
The Islamic State is a Sunni group that has been previously fighting in Syria and known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS). In early June, IS militants launched an offensive in Iraq capturing large parts of the country. In late June, the Islamic State announced the establishment of a caliphate on the territories it had seized in Iraq and Syria.
