Agence France
Presse BAGHDAD: Members of the Yazidi community, one of the Iraqi minorities
hardest hit by jihadi atrocities, killed 21 Sunni Arab villagers in a January revenge attack,
Amnesty International said Wednesday.
The London-based watchdog
investigated attacks carried out on January 25 by a Yazidi militia in Jiri and Sibaya, two Sunni
Arab villages in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq.
"Virtually not a
single house was spared. Half of those killed were elderly or disabled men and women and children,"
Amnesty said in a report.
It said another 40 were abducted, 17 of whom are
still missing.
Among other witnesses, Amnesty spoke to a father who lost
two sons aged 15 and 20 in the attack. Their 12-year-old brother was shot four times in the back but
survived.
"We could not imagine the assailants would target the old and the
sick but they did," one man told Amnesty, describing how his 66-year-old father was shot dead in his
wheelchair.
The Yazidis, a religious minority which lives mainly in Iraq's
Sinjar region, are neither Muslims nor Arabs and follow a unique faith despised by
ISIS
In 2014, ISIS jihadis massacred Yazidis, forced tens of thousands of
them to flee, captured thousands of girls and women as spoils of war and used them as sex
slaves.
The U.N. has said the atrocities committed against the small
community may amount to genocide.
"It is deeply troubling to see members of
the Yezidi community, who have suffered so much at the hands of ISIS, now themselves committing such
brutal crimes," Donatella Rovera, Amnesty's senior crisis advisor,
said.
The rights group said some witnesses accused Kurdish security forces
running the area of turning a blind eye.
The report, which included
investigations into other sectarian massacres, was issued to coincide with the first anniversary of
ISIS's massive offensive in Iraq.
Jihadist-led fighters took over around a
third of Iraq last June, bringing it to the brink of collapse.
Violence has
continued since as Iraqi government forces and a wide range of foreign allies have battled ISIS, so
far failing to break the back of the jihadi group.
"Looking back at the
carnage and chaos that has taken hold in the year since the ISIS takeover, the picture that emerges
is of an Iraq more fractured and bitterly divided than ever and rival factions hell-bent on
destroying each other, with no regard for who is actually a fighter or a civilian," Rovera
said.
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