Asia

Asia

Extremist militants kill dozens of people in Iraq

16 August 2014 19:51 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Insurgents of the Islamic State militant group killed some 80 members of Iraqi Yazidi religious minority, a Sunni cleric and a tribal leader in northern and eastern Iraq, while nine people were killed in separate incidents across the country, security sources said on Saturday, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Earlier in the day, a Kurdish security source told Xinhua that militants affiliated with the Islamic State, an al-Qaida offshoot, executed some 80 Yazidi men at the house of a Yazidi tribal leader in the village of Kocho, just west of the town of Sinjar, which located some 100 km west of Nineveh's provincial capital city of Mosul.

The Yazidis were killed because they refused to convert to Islam, the source said.

He also said that more than 200 women and children have been kidnapped by the Islamic State militants and said to be seized in the city of Tal Afar, some 70 km west of Mosul, which has been under the control of the militants more than a month ago.

Earlier, the militants captured the town of the predominantly Yazidi town of Sinjar and surrounding villages, pushing dozens of thousands Yazidis to flee their homes to Sinjar mountain and the nearby cities of the Kurdistan region.

In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, the Islamic State militants executed the leader of al-Gerwi Sunni tribe and his son in front of their house in the town of Jalawlaa, some 130 km northeast of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a provincial police source anonymously told Xinhua.

The tribal leader and son were executed because they refused to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State militants, the source said.

Also in Jalawlaa, the Islamic State militants executed a cleric of a Sunni mosque, also for rejecting allegiance to their self- proclaim Islamic State, the source added.

The ethnically mixed town of Jalawlaa has been the scene of fierce clashes between the Peshmerga Kurdish security forces and the Islamic State militants who captured the town a few day ago.

Also in Diyala, three people and eight others injured in separate shootings and bomb attacks across the province during the day, the source said.

In Salahudin province, three people were killed and 10 others wounded when a roadside bomb went off near a group construction workers who were repairing a bridge on a highway in southwest of the city of Samarra, some 120 km north of Baghdad, a provincial police source said.

Meanwhile, at least three Islamic State militants were killed in clashes with Sunni tribal fighters backed by a local police force of the town of Duluiyah, about 90 km north of Baghdad, the source said.

During the past few weeks, al-Jubour tribal fighters in Duluiyah have repelled several attacks by the Islamic State militants which tried to capture the town.

The security situation began to drastically deteriorate in Iraq on June 10 when bloody clashes broke out between Iraqi security forces and hundreds of Sunni militants who took control of the country's northern city of Mosul and later seized swathes of territories after the Iraqi security forces abandoned their posts in Nineveh and other predominantly Sunni provinces.