Yazidis' Iraq horror: 'I know what happened to them, but I cannot bear to say it'

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Hundreds of Iraqi soldiers were divided into lines of ten men, given rushed interrogations by Islamic State fighters and shot dead, says a survivor. By dawn, he was one of only 20 left alive.

Lalish, northern Iraq: Barefoot on the burning road, a handful of families walk up the hill towards the holiest site of the Yazidi faith the temple of Sheikh Adi in Lalish.

These families are not making a pilgrimage. They are seeking refuge, some of the tens of thousands who fled the brutal advance of the militants from Islamic State through Yazidi towns and villages in northern Iraq last month.

At first they fled mostly on foot to rocky Mount Sinjar, where many died of thirst, hunger and exposure to the unrelenting elements of the Iraqi summer.

At just 18, Geni Abdullah (centre) is the oldest surviving member of her large, extended family. Photo: Ruth Pollard

When they could endure no more, and with the Kurdish People's Protection Units or YPG providing safe passage down the mountain, they fled across the nearby Syrian border and again walked for days, crossing back into the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region exhausted and traumatised.

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Persecuted throughout the ages, Yazidis speak of 72 genocides in their nearly 6700-year history, and many say this is the 73rd.

Those who survived are now homeless, spread through the northern towns and villages of Iraqi Kurdistan, living around the temple in Lalish, in unfinished houses in the nearby town of Baadra, in tents on the side of nearby hills and in halls and other shelters in the Kurdish city of Dohuk.

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Yazidis' Iraq horror: 'I know what happened to them, but I cannot bear to say it'