40 children reported dead after attack in northern Iraq

Kurds to launch counteroffensive against fighters from Islamic State

Forty children from northern Iraq's Yazidi minority are reported to have died as a result of a jihadist attack on the Sinjar region, the United Nations Children's Fund said on Tuesday.

"According to official reports received by UNICEF, these children from the Yazidi minority died as a direct consequence of violence, displacement and dehydration over the past two days," a statement said.

On Sunday, fighters from the Islamic State jihadist group, which controls much of northwestern Iraq, took over Sinjar, which had been under the control of Kurdish troops.

The town, near the Syrian border, is a hub for Iraq's Yazidis, a very closed community that follows an ancient faith rooted in Zoroastrianism. Jihadists refer to the Yazidis as "devil worshippers".

Sinjar was also a temporary home for thousands of displaced people from other minorities, such as Shiite Turkmen who had fled the nearby city of Tal Afar when the Islamic State launched its offensive on June 9.

The attack on Sinjar sent thousands of people running from their homes in panic, some of them scurrying into the mountains with no supplies.

"Families who fled the area are in immediate need of urgent assistance, including up to 25,000 children who are now stranded in mountains surrounding Sinjar and are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including drinking water and sanitation services," UNICEF said.

Pictures posted on the Internet by members of the Yazidi community show little clusters of people gathering on the cave-dotted flanks of a craggy canyon in the Sinjar Mountains.

Yazidi leaders and rights activists have said the very existence of the multi-millennial community on its ancestral land was at risk as a result of the latest violence and displacement.

Kurdish Peshmerga forces are planning a counteroffensive against Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq after being routed by the radical Sunni insurgents on Sunday, senior Kurdish officials said on Monday.

One of the officials said the Kurds had been overstretched in a vast region but were now calling in a large number of fighters to hit back, adding: "It is a very dangerous situation for the region. Something needs to be done soon."

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has called upon his country's armed forces to help Kurdish forces battle a Sunni militant offensive in northern Iraq that has forced tens of thousands of people from the minority Yazidi community to flee their homes.

Iraqi military spokesman Lieutenant General Qassim al-Moussawi said on Monday that al-Maliki has commanded the air force to provide aerial support to the Kurds in the first sign of cooperation between the two militaries since Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, was captured by the militants on June 10.

AFP - Reuters - AP

(China Daily 08/06/2014 page11)