http://www.aina.org/news/20140807051254.htmJihadists took over Iraq's largest Christian town Qaraqosh and surrounding areas Thursday and sent tens of thousands of panicked residents fleeing towards autonomous Kurdistan, officials and witnesses said. Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) 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, told AFP.
Meanwhile, children are dying in Sinjar.
Death Toll for Yazidis Stranded on Mountain Rising By the Minutehttp://www.aina.org/news/20140807020123.htmThe death toll among thousands of Yezidi civilians on Shingal mountain is rising every minute, says Rudaw reporter, with dead bodies lying everywhere among the rocks. "The children and elderly who have died are so many that they cannot be counted," said Barakat Issa, Rudaw reporter. "In the past four days I have witnessed the death of many."Since Saturday thousands of Yezidi Kurds from Shingal and surrounding villages have taken shelter on a mountain, fleeing the capture of their town by militants of the Islamic State (IS).
