Yazidis flee to Turkish border as Islamic State advances
Militants took over Iraq’s largest Christian town Qaraqosh and surrounding areas on Thursday and sent tens of thousands of panicked residents fleeing towards autonomous Kurdistan, officials and witnesses said.
Islamic State (IS) militants moved in overnight after the withdrawal of Kurdish peshmerga troops, who are stretched thin across several fronts in Iraq, residents said.
“I now know that the towns of Qaraqosh, Tal Kayf, Bartella and Karamlesh have been emptied of their original population and are now under the control of the militants,” Joseph Thomas, the Chaldean archbishop of Kirkuk and Sulaimaniyah, said.
Qaraqosh is an entirely Christian town which lies between Mosul, the militants’ main hub in Iraq, and Arbil, the Kurdish region’s capital. It usually has a population of around 50,000.
“It’s a catastrophe, a tragic situation. We call on the UN Security Council to immediately intervene. Tens of thousands of terrified people are being displaced as we speak, it cannot be described,” the archbishop said.
Tal Kayf, the home of a significant Christian community as well as members of the Shabak Shia minority, also emptied overnight.
“Tal Kayf is now in the hands of the Islamic State. They faced no resistance and rolled in just after midnight,” said Boutros Sargon, a resident who fled the town and was reached by phone in Arbil.
“I heard some gunshots last night and when I looked outside, I saw a military convoy from the Islamic State. They were shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is greatest),” he said.
YAZIDIS FLEE:
Meanwhile, thousands of Iraqis, predominantly from the minority Yazidi ethnic group, have fled to the Turkish border to escape an advance by Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq.
Around 150 Yazidis were placed in state residences in Turkey’s southeastern Sirnak province and around the nearby city of Batman after crossing the Habur border gate late on Wednesday, the officials said.
“Those who have passports crossed the border, but thousands of people who don’t are waiting at the other side,” said Seyfettin Aydemir, the mayor of Sirnak’s Silopi district.
“We’re in talks with regional lawmakers about the situation,” he said.
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