BAGHDAD (Reuters) - When the Islamic State made another dramatic push through northern Iraq, many Iraqis fled their towns and villages before the Sunni militants notorious for beheadings arrived. The Islamic State, whose methods seem excessive even to al Qaeda, regards the minority ethnic group as "devil worshippers", making them prime candidates for the sword. Tens of thousands fled the weekend assault on Sinjar and are now surrounded, according to witnesses and the United Nations, after the Sunni militants inflicted a humiliating defeat on Kurdish forces who had held towns in the area for years. "The reported deaths of 40 children from minority groups who were displaced from Sinjar city and district by armed violence are of extreme concern," UNICEF said in a statement. The agency did not have figures for Tuesday. "According to official reports received by UNICEF, these children from the Yazidi minority died as a direct consequence of violence, displacement and dehydration over the past two days." “My people are being slaughtered,” she continued, referring to reports of mass killings of those who had stayed behind. He said he last spoke to them Monday before their last cellphone battery died.
– The Islamic State regards Iraq's Yazidi minority as devil worshippers, so when militants captured the village of Sinjar this weekend, 60-year-old Yazidi farmer Kareem Sido fled to the mountains with thousands of others. What he found there were people dying of thirst in conditions so dire that he risked the trip home, Reuters reports. Up to 40,000 refugees remain on Mount Sinjar, however, surrounded by the extremists who attacked their village and who have a penchant for beheading dissenters. There is little food or water, and though the UN has offered to drop supplies, it hasn't been asked to do so by the Iraqi government. One witness tells the Washington Post that 10 children and one elderly woman died yesterday and seven children Monday; UNICEF believes 40 children have died since fleeing their village Monday night. "We need to get them out. If we don’t, it would be catastrophic," a UNICEF rep tells the Post. Going home would also spell death: "We would need a miracle to avoid the Islamic State's brutality," says one resident. There are about 308,000 Yazidi in Sinjar’s district; a minority sect of the Kurds, their religion is a combo of ancient Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam. When the Islamic State came to Sinjar on Saturday, 20 Yazidi were killed in a failed defense and 30 more died of unknown causes. Many more fled—the US-trained army fell apart and the Kurdish pershmerga, mobilized to take their place, ran away "without shooting a bullet," one Sinjar resident tells Reuters. The Christian Science Monitor has this primer on the Yazidi people.