700 Yezidi families have just been pushed on to Mt. Sinjar, after two villages were taken by the Islamic State, according to journalists from the area.

The families had been hiding in the mountains, while men stayed behind to fight with light weaponry in the villages. Now they are surrounded and threatened with genocide and mass rape.

The story is being ignored by virtually the whole of the English speaking world.

When Islamic State militants streamed into two Yezidi villages yesterday morning, the men fled down a valley to Mt. Sinjar and joined up with family members in the mountains. They have enough food and water to last only a couple of weeks and are surrounded by Islamic State fighters, according to a source who has family on the mountain with whom he has been in contact by phone.

The Yezidis are heading toward a small Kurdish military base on the top of the mountain that has about 300 fighters. The number of Yezidis fleeing is estimated to be between 3,000 and 7,000. Coalition forces have begun bombing Islamic State targets around Mt. Sinjar, following an attack on Sunday of militants that had surrounded the Kurdish town of Kobani for months.

But the families are in need of food and water. And the light weaponry of Yezidi fighters is unlikely to hold off Islamic State militants.

The spiritual head of the Yezidis, Tahsin Ali Saeed, says 5,000 Yezidis have thus far been killed, 7,000 women and children kidnapped, and 350,000 displaced. The women and girls who have been kidnapped have been placed in brothels and turned into the sex slaves, while the men have usually been massacred, making the threat to Yezidis on the mountain dire.

There are, altogether, close to a million Yezidis, most of whom live in Iraq.

Yezidi refugees are now scattered amid several camps in Kurdistan and Turkey, with many regularly on the move. Yezidis are in almost universal agreement that they want out of the Middle East, with most preferring to go to America.

While the plight of minorities provided the initial impetus for re-entering Iraq, their persecution is increasingly ignored.

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Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photos: Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia Commons