Iraq Crisis Yazidi children
Parents trapped with their families on a mountain by Islamic State militants are resorting to cutting themselves so their starving children can drink their blood. 40,000 members of the Yazidi community have been trapped on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq for 10 days without food or water, under siege from Jihadist fighters. They fled their village when the Islamic State group captured the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, near the Syrian border. The Yazidis are a religious minority, who practice an ancient religion with links to Zoroastrianism, that the Sunni Muslim radicals consider heretical. IS had issued an ultimatum to the Yazidi community to convert to Islam, pay a religious fine, flee their homes or face death. 8,000 Yazidis, who escaped down the mountain to a makeshift refugee camp in Dohuk Province in Kurdistan, have described the desperate plight of those they left behind. One man recalled seeing four children die of thirst in front of him.
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