The sheer brutality of these things is mind-blowing.

Via France 24:

Displaced Yazidi people fleeing into across a bridge into Syria from northern Iraq told FRANCE 24 reporters on the ground of the horrors committed by ISIS militants terrorising their region.

“They took the women and the young girls. The men were killed with butcher’s knives,” one young woman told FRANCE 24.

“They cut off their arms and their legs. They killed my family, I have no one now,” a young man added.

Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking religious minority, are fleeing the violence of the militant group Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS or ISIL), which wants to force them to convert to Islam.

Yazidis have suffered religious persecution for generations because of their beliefs, which include some elements similar to Christianity, Judaism and other ancient religions. ISIS (which now calls itself the Islamic State) militants consider them “devil worshippers”, because of a similarity in the name of a spirit they worship and the Arabic word for “devil”.