Vian Dakhil urges government and international community to save her community from massacre
Gulf News Report
Yazidi lawmaker Vian Dakhil breaks down in tears during a parliamentary session on Tuesday.
A Yazidi lawmaker broke down in tears during a parliamentary session on Tuesday as she urged the government and the international community to save her community from being massacred or starved into extinction.
“Over the past 48 hours, 30,000 families have been besieged in the Sinjar mountains, with no water and no food,” said Vian Dakhil.
“As we speak there is genocide taking place against the Yezidis. My family is being butchered,” she said. “My family is being butchered.”
Hundreds of people from Iraq’s Yazidi community have fled to Turkey after radical Islamists took over large swathes of territory in northern Iraq, Turkish officials said on Thursday.
An attack by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) at the weekend sparked a mass exodus from the northern part of Iraq including the town of Sinjar, where most of the population is made up of the Yazidi minority.
“Our women are being used as concubines and sold in the markets. Please save us, Save us,” said the MP on Tuesday. “We are being slaughtered; our entire religion is being wiped off the face of the earth. I am begging you, in the name of humanity.”
Humanitarian agencies said between 10,000 and 40,000 civilians remain trapped on Mount Sinjar since being driven out of surrounding villages and the town of Sinjar, the Washington Post reported, adding that many had started dying of thirst.