BAGHDAD — Members of the Yazidi community, one of the Iraqi minorities hardest hit by militant atrocities, killed 21 Sunni Arab villagers in a January revenge attack, Amnesty International said Wednesday.



The London-based watchdog investigated attacks carried out on January 25 by a Yazidi militia in Jiri and Sibaya, two Sunni Arab villages in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq.



“Virtually not a single house was spared. Half of those killed were elderly or disabled men and women and children,” Amnesty said in a report.



It said another 40 were abducted, 17 of whom are still missing. Among other witnesses, Amnesty spoke to a father who lost two sons aged 15 and 20 in the attack.



Their 12-year-old brother was shot four times in the back but survived. “We could not imagine the assailants would target the old and the sick but they did,” one man told Amnesty, describing how his 66-year-old father was shot dead in his wheelchair.



The Yazidis, a religious minority which lives mainly in Iraq's Sinjar region, are neither Muslims nor Arabs and follow a unique faith despised by Daesh (the so-called IS) group.



In 2014, Daesh massacred Yazidis, forced tens of thousands of them to flee, captured thousands of girls and women as spoils of war and used them as sex slaves.



The UN has said the atrocities committed against the small community may amount to genocide. “It is deeply troubling to see members of the Yezidi community, who have suffered so much at the hands of Daesh, now themselves committing such brutal crimes,” Donatella Rovera, Amnesty's senior crisis adviser, said.



The group said some witnesses accused Kurdish security forces running the area of turning a blind eye. — AFP