They Have Vicious Plans for Them': Fears for Hundreds of Yazidi 'Enslaved' Women Captured by ISIS Fanatics in Iraq as America Wipes out Terrorist Convoy after Launching SECOND Round of Bombing
- GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING: This story contains images of death that some readers may find disturbing
- ISIS captured hundreds of Yazidi women in Mosul, Iraq's second city, hours after U.S. launched air strikes
- Two F/A18 fighters dispatched to unleash 500lb laser-guided bombs on Islamic militants outside Kurdish capital Erbil
- It is America's first military offensive in Iraq since it pulled out of the country in 2011 after eight years at war
- Comes after Obama vowed to 'help' Iraqi forces with airstrikes to prevent 'a potential act of genocide'
- Hundreds of thousands of religious minorities have been driven from their homes as ISIS jihadists storm towns
- Some 50,000 Yazidis - half of them children - fled to hills after ISIS took Sinjar, the Yazidis' heartland in Iraq
- ISIS calls Yazidis devil worshippers because of their beliefs that predate Islam, Christianity and Judaism
- Obama said U.S. warplanes had already carried out airdrops of humanitarian aid to Yazidis holed up in Sinjar hills
- David Cameron welcomes airstrikes to help Iraqis 'in their hour of desperate need'
- Foreign Office urges British nationals to stay away from Kurdistan as America pounded Islamic State positions
- FAA prohibits U.S. airlines from flying over Iraq, British Airways also announces it is suspending flights over country
ISIS militants have made hostages of hundreds of Yazidi women after America waded into the unfolding crisis in Iraq by dropping bombs on the extremists' artillery.
Earlier President Obama authorised two bombers to sweep up form the Persian Gulf and drop their payloads on jihadist emplacements, in response to their actions against the Yazidi religious minority in the north of the country.
Later the U.S. military conducted two additional air strikes against the extremists near the city of Arbil in northern Iraq, the Pentagon said.
The second wave of air strikes, included a drone strike on a mortar position and an attack by four F/A-18 jets on an Islamic State convoy and mortar position. They made two passes, released eight bombs and "neutralized" the fighters
But now ISIS - which calls itself the Islamic State - has struck the group again by capturing hundreds of women from Mosul, Iraq's second city. Earlier reports indicated that capture Yazidi women were intended to be given to young jihadists as wives.
American aircraft continued attacking targets in Iraq on Friday, the Pentagon said, killing terrorists who were launching attacks from mortars and underway in a convoy.
‘Please save us! SOS! save us!’ a man pleaded, ‘Our people are in the desert. They are exposed to a genocide.’
The savage group - which boasts of crucifying, mutilating and executing those it conquers - is now advancing into the Kurdish northern area of Iraq, which was formerly thought to be safe.
Fighters were today just 25 miles from Erbil, the Kurdish capital, which has been a safe haven in the country throughout the rise of ISIS, and also during the Iraq war to topple Saddam Hussein.An Iraqi government official confirmed the hostage-taking, and said the women are all younger than 35.
Kamil Amin, the spokesman for Iraq's Human Rights Ministry, said: 'We think that the terrorists by now consider them slaves and they have vicious plans for them. We think that these women are going to be used in demeaning ways by those terrorists to satisfy their animalistic urges in a way that contradicts all the human and Islamic values.'There are claims that many have been raped and there are fears that they will be sold into slavery by the fanatics. Those trapped on the mountain say they fear they face ‘slaughter’ . They spoke of appalling conditions with no water, food or medicine, and little shelter apart from lone trees, under which groups huddle together, or caves dotted in the barren, bleak mountainside.
‘We are being slaughtered,’ Yazidi MP, Vian Dakhil, said: ‘Our entire religion is being wiped off the face of the earth.’
Another said: ‘We have nothing here except ground to sleep on, there is no food or water, people are hungry, people are crying for help.’
One Yazidi official, Mahma Khalil, put the number sheltering on the mountain, which the community considers the holy site where Noah’s ark settled after the biblical flood, as high as 250,000.
Drama: The two American warplanes dropped 500lb laser-guided bombs on an Islamic State artillery position
Near Irbil in a bid to halt the ISIS horde sweeping the country and save thousands of innocent lives
Split: There are three main religious groups in Iraq: Shia Arabs, the country's majority, Sunni Arabs and Kurds, who are religiously Sunni but divided by their ethnicity. The is also a minority of Christians scattered across northern Iraq, who comprise just over 1 per cent of the population (roughly 450,000 people). ISIS, who are Sunni Arab, have forced tens of thousands of Yazidis - an ancient religion that predates Islam - from their heartland in Sinjar
US Government Releases Video of Air Operation in the Gulf