Yazidi militia kill 21 in Iraq

BAGHDAD: Members of the Yazidi community, one of the Iraqi minorities hardest hit by Jihadist atrocities, killed 21 Arab villagers in a January revenge attack, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.
The London-based watchdog investigated attacks carried out on January 25 by a Yazidi militia in Jiri and Sibaya, two 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 the Islamic State jihadist group.