US News

Kids massacred, women enslaved as jihadists raid Iraqi enclave

Bloodthirsty militants from the Islamic State buried children alive and took women as slaves during a raid on the ancient home of a minority religious sect whose members they ordered to either convert or die, an Iraqi government official said Sunday.

Members of the Sunni terror group also cheered and waved their weapons over victims’ bodies after slaughtering hundreds of Yazidis in the town of Sinjar, Human Rights Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani told Reuters.

“We have striking evidence obtained from Yazidis fleeing Sinjar and some who escaped death, and also crime-scene images that show indisputably that the gangs of the Islamic State have executed at least 500 Yazidis after seizing Sinjar.”

“Some of the victims, including women and children, were buried alive in scattered mass graves in and around Sinjar.”

Sudani said at least 300 women were kidnapped as slaves, with some locked up in a seized police station and others moved to the town of Tal Afar.

“We are afraid they will take them outside the country,” Sudani said of the captive women.

He said the insurgents — who now control large swaths of Syria and Iraq — publicly celebrated their “vicious atrocity” against the Yazidis, whom the Islamic State have branded “devil worshippers.”

“In some of the images we have obtained, there are lines of dead Yazidis who have been shot in the head while the Islamic State fighters cheer and wave their weapons over the corpses,” Sudani said.

Tens of thousands of Yazidis have climbed nearby Mount Sinjar to escape the Islamists ahead of Sunday’s deadline to convert to Islam or face execution.

Yazidi children make their way towards the Dyrian border after the ISIS attack on Sinjar.Reuters

The Yazidis are ethnic Kurds who practice a unique religion that is based on Zoroastrianism and incorporates elements of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Since fleeing to Mount Sinjar, dozens of Yazidi children have died of dehydration on the barren cliffs. The US last week began dropping relief supplies there.

American fighter jets and drones bombed Islamic State insurgents for a third day Sunday, hitting armed trucks and mortar positions near Irbil, home to a US consulate and joint US-Iraqi military operations center. The State Department said Sunday it had evacuated some staffers from Irbil to elsewhere in Iraq and to Amman, Jordan, amid an offensive by the Islamic State.

And Shiite militia forces loyal to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stepped up patrols around Baghdad after he delivered a speech indicating he would defy calls to drop a bid for a third term.

In his surprise address late Sunday, Maliki announced on state TV that he would file a legal complaint against newly elected President Fouad Massoum.

He accused Massoum of violating the Iraqi constitution by failing to name a prime minister-designate to form a new government.

A senior US official for Iraq, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Brett McGurk, backed Massoum over Maliki, whom America has blamed for stoking Iraq’s security crisis.

“Fully support President of #Iraq Fuad Masum as guarantor of the Constitution and a PM nominee who can build a national consensus,” he tweeted Sunday.

As the conflict rages on abroad, the feds are claiming a North Carolina man busted on a 2012 gun rap at JFK Airport last week is an avowed terrorist and supporter of the Islamic State.

Donald Ray Morgan, 44, was nabbed after a months-long Middle East trip, according to a source. On Twitter, Morgan expressed a desire to wage jihad alongside Islamic State fighters.

With Post wire services