UN says Daesh ‘may have committed Yezidi genocide’

GENEVA 

The UN human rights office said Thursday that Daesh “may have committed genocide, war crimes and crimes against the Ezidi minority in Iraq.”

"ISIL’s attacks on the Yezidi population pointed to the intent of ISIL to destroy the Yezidis as a group, which strongly suggests that ISIL may have perpetrated genocide," the report said.

According to report, hundreds of Ezidi men and boys were killed in Ninewa in August 2014.

"The Yezidi population was rounded up, with men and boys over the age of 14 separated from the women and girls. The males were led away and shot by ISIL, while the women were abducted as spoils of war.”

The report found that in some instances “villages were entirely emptied of their Yezidi population."

The report also quoted witnesses describing the rape “of girls as young as six and nine and a scene where ISIL members sat laughing as two teenage girls were being raped in the room next door."

Sinjar, in northwest Iraq near the border with Syria, had been under Iraq- and Syria-based militant group Daesh control since Aug. 3, when the peshmerga withdrew from the region. 

Around 30,000 Ezidis fled to Mount Sinjar following the advance. Of this number, 20,000 have been transferred to the province of Dohuk through a safe corridor along the Syrian border.

Daesh's siege of Mount Sinjar was broken on Dec. 20, 2014 after a successful operation by Iraqi peshmerga fighters, backed by the U.S.-led international coalition.