DUHOK, Kurdistan Region—Militants of the Islamic State (IS/ISIS) raided the Yezidi village of Kucho, killing 80 men and taking a number of women and children hostage after a deadline to convert to Islam expired on Friday, villagers said.
According to Rudaw sources, the IS gave the residents of Kucho a deadline to convert to Islam or face consequences. The deadline expired today.
Kucho is located 80 kilometers southeast of Shingal where thousands of Yezidis fled and took refuge on a nearby mountain as the town fell to the IS earlier this month.
Local Yezidi sources said that a large force of IS militants arriving on buses attacked the village, rounded up 1,200 people and hauled them into the school village.
The spokesman for the Yezidi Spiritual Community, Karim Suleiman confirmed the the massacre by the IS, saying, “One of the men in the village escaped the IS injured.”
Scores of Yezidi villagers were killed during the initial IS attack on their region earlier this month and hundreds more, mostly women and young girls are still missing.
The women are believed to have been held in Mosul, Iraq’s IS stronghold.
The United Nations, US, EU and human rights organizations have strongly condemned the violent IS attacks on the Yezidi religious minority.
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