Survivor: ISIS massacred villagers
ISIS massacres 80 men from a Yazidi village and kidnaps the women and girls after its sheik refuses to convert to Islam. Survivor Khalof Khodede, a survivor:
Islamic State kidnapped about 400 to 600 people in our village and the majority of those people are women and children. They killed most of the men
The militants initially do not plan on the killings:
First they wanted us all to convert to Islam and we said yes just to save our lives. We were all very afraid. Then our sheikh said ‘I won’t convert to Islam’. And then they gathered us inside the village school,’ he said.
After seizing gold and jewelry, the militants take the men are taken to the first floor of the school and the women to the second. They are loaded onto minibuses in groups of 10 to 20 and told they are being taken to the ancestral Yazidi homeland of Sinjar, but the militants stop the vehicles and open fire. Khodede is among few survivors:
They started shooting at us randomly. They had heavy guns like machine guns. I was hit in my leg and on my pelvis.