Islamic State kills dozens of Yazidis in 'massacre': Iraqi officials

Islamic State militants have conducted a “massacre” in the northern Iraqi village of Kocho, Iraq officials said on Saturday.

Dozens are said to have been killed, with the majority of the dead believed to have belonged to the Yazidi minority, which has been targeted by IS. 

"We have information from multiple sources, in the region and through intelligence, that [on Friday] afternoon, a convoy of [IS] armed men entered this village," senior Iraqi official Hoshyar Zebari told AFP.

"They took their revenge on its inhabitants, who happened to be mostly Yazidis who did not flee their homes. They committed a massacre against the people. Around 80 of them have been killed."

Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq’s former foreign minister who is now working closely with the Kurdistan Regional Government also spoke out about the Kocho killings, possibly linking them to the wave of recent US air stikes. 

“The villagers had received local assurances that they were safe,” told the Washington Post. “Maybe they killed them in revenge for the setbacks they have suffered from the air strikes.”

The killings have promoted a response from the UN, with the United Nations on Friday voting unanimously to try and cut off funding to the group and also to limit the stream of foreign fighters who have flocked to IS’s cause.

EU ministers have also agreed to hold an emergency meeting in Brussels to discuss, arming the Iraqi Kurdish fighters. Member states France and the UK, have already started sending military support.

In recent weeks, IS militants have made inroads into northern Iraq, sweeping through the Nineveh province, and displacing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, many of whom have fled to the autonomous Kurdish region in the northeast of Iraq.

Religious minorities, namely the Christians and the Yazidis, have been particularly badly hit.

Mohsen Tawwal, a Yazidi fighter, who returned to the village, told AFP by telephone that bodies were just left strewn on the ground.

"We made it into a part of Kocho village, where residents were under siege, but we were too late," Tawwal said.

"There were corpses everywhere. We only managed to get two people out alive. The rest had all been killed."

Kurdish officials have confirmed the Kocho killings, saying that they put the figure at 81 killed. It is possible many others have been abducted, with news gradually emerging about mass kidnappings carried out by IS militants.

According Yazidi accounts and human rights groups, IS has kidnapped scores of men, women and children who were unable to flee their assault that began on 3 August.

The refugees say the women and children are being held in IS-controlled prisons in Nineveh and that many of the men are feared to have been executed.

"My two cousins and my two uncles were kidnapped," Jacqueline Ali, a 17-year-old high school student now sheltered at the Bajid Kandala camp near the Tigris River, in Iraqi Kurdistan told AFP.

"Their sisters and mothers are so scared for them that they have been refusing to eat since we arrived in the camp. We are really afraid for them."

Amnesty International, which has been documenting the mass abductions, says thousands of Yazidis have been kidnapped.

"The victims are of all ages, from babies to elderly men and women," Amnesty International's Senior Crisis Response Adviser Donatella Rovera told AFP.

She also said the kidnappings all appear to have happened in villages where residents dared to take up arms against IS.

While IS has a track record of kidnapping in Syria, the group has not previously rounded up women and children en masse.

"It seems they took away entire families, all those who did not manage to flee," Rovera said.

It is believed that some 3,000 women and girls are now being held in IS jails.

"We fear the men may have been executed," Rovera added, describing the kidnappings as a "crime" under international law.

While some 200,000 Iraqis - largely Yazidis - managed to flee, tens of thousands of others became trapped on Mount Sinjar with no access to food, water or shelter.

Relief efforts by Kurdish forces, as well as US airstrikes have now allowed the vast majority of those trapped to escape although some groups have remained on the mountain.

The US carried out more air strikes on Friday, the military said, after receiving reports that Islamic State "terrorists were attacking civilians" in the area.

With the UN overstretched by the recent influx of internally discalced, with more than a million Iraqis having fled their homes in recent months, Turkish aid agencies on Saturday said they would begin building refugee camps in northern Iraq to house 36,000 Yazidis. A further camp for some 20,000 Turkmen – another minority displaced by IS will also be built.