REUTERS / BAGHDAD

Militant group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which witnesses and officials say has executed hundreds of members of Iraq’s Yazidis, has released a video that seeks to show it enlightened hundreds of members of the religious minority by converting them to Islam.

The production was issued not long after the group, which later renamed itself as the Islamic State (IS), released a video showing one of its black-clad fighters beheading American journalist James Foley, sparking international outrage.

The Yazidis, followers of an ancient religion derived from Zoroastrianism who are part of the country’s Kurdish minority, have paid the highest price for ISIL’s dramatic advance through northern Iraq.

ISIL militants, widely seen as more hardline than al-Qaeda, storm into villages armed with machine guns and give Yazidis a simple choice: convert to Islam or die.

Witnesses have said most of their hundreds of victims were shot dead at close range, while others including women and children were buried alive. Women who avoided death were rounded up and taken away as slaves, witnesses said. The threat to the Yazidis was one reason cited by US President Barack Obama when he launched US air strikes against ISIL in parts of Iraq earlier this month.