Yazidi villagers build sand barriers to guard against attacks

NINEWA / Aswat al-Iraq:

Yazidi residents have surrounded five villages in Ninewa with sand barriers to protect them against possible attacks, according to a Yazidi official.

“The villages of Srijka, Khitara, Doghata, Nafira and Khoshaba (30 km north of Mosul), affiliated to al-Qosh district, have collected money to build sand barriers in an attempt to guard against possible attacks…,” Dawoud Murad Khitari, an official from the Cultural Lalsh Center in Khitara village, north of Mosul, told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

“This campaign came following attacks in Sinjar, Shaleej and Khazna, which left hundreds of victims,” Khitari explained. “The residents of these villages feel vulnerable to terrorist attacks,” he noted, adding that nearly 30,000 Yazidis live in the villages.

Yazidis are primarily ethnic Kurds and most live near Mosul, with smaller communities in Armenia, Georgia, Iran, Russia, Syria, and Turkey. They number around 800,000 individuals in total, but estimates of their population size vary, partially due to the Yazidi tradition of secrecy about their religious beliefs.

Sinjar, 120 km northwest of Mosul, is inhabited by Yazidis, a religious minority whose followers are generally situated in northern Iraq. Some 350,000 Yazidis live in villages around Mosul, 405 km north of Baghdad.

Last July, two suicide bombings hit Talafar City, killing 39 and wounding more than 80 others.
On August 7, a Kia-modeled truck bomb hit a Shiite mosque in the predominantly-Turkmen Sharikhan area (7 km north of Mosul), leaving 39 persons killed and 279 others wounded.