Yazidi Refugees Escape Islamic State Fighters: The Battle for Iraq (Dispatch 6)
Posted
August 19, 2014
Views
988,377
Likes
5,723
Comments
1,169
Engagement
0.70%
August 19, 2014
988,377
5,723
1,169
0.70%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
See what was published immediately before and after this episode.
12:06Now PlayingSubscribe to VICE News here
Members of Iraq’s Yazidis sect follow an ancient religion, which incorporates elements of Islam and indigenous beliefs. After the Islamic State overran parts of northern Iraq, tens of thousands of Yazidis were forced into the Sinjar mountain range, where Islamic State militants — who consider the Yazidi devil worshippers — surrounded them.
President Obama claimed on August 14 that the US military intervention in Iraq broke the siege of the trapped Yazidi civilians in the Sinjar mountains. But the Yazidi themselves disagree. Instead, they are adamant that they owe their rescue from the surrounding Islamic State militants to the Syrian Kurdish fighters of the People's Protection Units (YPG). The YPG has been fighting the Islamic State longer and harder than any other group in Syria, and pushed a narrow escape route deep through Islamic State territory to rescue the Yazidis.
VICE News travelled through the desert corridor to ascertain the true story of the Yazidis’ last minute escape from the Islamic State.
Click to watch Part 1 of The Islamic State
Click to watch all our dispatches from Iraq
Check out the VICE News beta for more
Follow VICE News here:
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
