BAGHDAD (Reuters) - When the Islamic State made another dramatic push through northern Iraq, many Iraqis fled their towns and villages before the Sunni militants notorious for beheadings arrived. 
 
 But the Yazidis of the town of Sinjar were especially terrified. The Islamic State, whose methods seem excessive even to al Qaeda, regards the minority ethnic group as "devil worshippers", making them prime candidates for the sword. 
 
 Tens of thousands fled the weekend assault on Sinjar and are now surrounded, according to witnesses and the United Nations, after the Sunni militants inflicted a humiliating defeat on Kurdish forces who had held towns in the area for years. 
 
 The Islamic State captured three towns and a fifth oil field and reached Iraq's biggest dam, consolidating gains made after a lightning sweep through the north in June which poses the biggest threat to Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein. 
 
 Residents said about 50 people were killed after the Sunni militants, who have declared parts of Iraq and Syria they control a caliphate, arrived in Sinjar late on Saturday. While 20 were killed trying to defend that town, it's not clear how the others died. 
 
 Many panicked Yazidis scrambled to find water and food for their children before climbing into their vehicles and rushing to surrounding mountains. 
 
 Some did not manage to escape. 
 
 "The innocent people of Sinjar were slaughtered. Men were killed and women have been taken as slaves by Islamic State fighters," said Vian Dakheel, a member of parliament from the Yazidi community, bursting into tears. 
 
 The Yazidis, followers of an ancient religion derived from Zoroastrianism, are spread over northern Iraq and are part of the country's Kurdish minority. 
 
 Many of their villages were destroyed when Saddam Hussein's troops tried to crush the Kurds. Some were taken away by the executed former dictator's intelligence agents. 
 
 Now they are on the defensive again years after the fall of Saddam raised hopes of a brighter future for all. 
 
 WHITE FLAGS 
 
 Some of the most vulnerable could not withstand the weekend offensive. Almost 70 children between the ages of one month and four died of thirst or hunger, said Dakheel. 
 
 The U.N. children's agency said families who fled the area are in immediate need of urgent assistance, including up to 25,000 children stranded in mountains. 
 
 "The reported deaths of 40 children from minority groups who were displaced from Sinjar city and district by armed violence are of extreme concern," UNICEF said in a statement. 
 
 "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." 
 
 Sinjar district's estimated population of 308,000 includes about 150,000 children, said UNICEF. 
 
 When the Islamic State swept into northern Iraq, the U.S.-trained army virtually crumbled. Thousands of soldiers fled. 
 
 Hoping to fill a security vacuum, Kurdish fighters known as peshmerga who often boast of their bravery in battles with Saddam Hussein's troops, stepped in, as did Shi'ite militias. 
 
 But the Islamic State routed the Kurds in the weekend surge, using artillery, mortars and machineguns seized from Iraqi soldiers compared to the Kurds' mostly AK-47 assault rifles. 
 
 "We are feeling so frustrated to see the peshmerga fleeing the town and leaving us alone face to face with Islamic State fighters," said farmer Haji Beso, 47, a resident of Sinjar who also operates a small pickup truck that transports goods. 
 
 "It was their duty to protect innocent people and die if they had to but they chose to flee without shooting a bullet." 
 
 Sinjar, the ancestral home to the Yazidi religious sect, felt helpless. Then the exodus began. 
 
 "After the peshmerga let us down and fled without fighting we couldn’t stay because we know that we would need a miracle to avoid the Islamic State's brutality," said Alyas Khudhir, a 33-year-old government employee with three children. 
 
 "I’m sleeping with my kids on rocks and food is scarce. I have collected some tree leafs to feed my kids if food runs out. We are slowly dying and nobody cares about us." 
 
 The refugees spoke to Reuters in telephone interviews. 
 
 While the Islamist State sets its sights on new territory, there is no sign Iraq's bickering politicians will be able to form a power-sharing government soon to counter the insurgency. 
 
 Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is defying calls by Sunnis, Kurds, some fellow Shi'ites and power broker Iran to step aside and make room for a less polarizing figure who could ease sectarian tensions causing the worst bloodshed since the height of a civil war in 2006-2007. 
 
 Maliki has ordered his air force to help the Kurds, who have vowed to launch a counter-offensive against the Islamic State. But there is little sign of relief on the ground. 
 
 Kareem Sido, 60, who grows tomatoes and cucumbers on his farm, decided to return to Sinjar when conditions on the mountain became too desperate. 
 
 Like many he was scared that snakes and scorpions could hurt his loved ones. After watching two babies die from the heat, he decided to return home. 
 
 On arrival, he was stopped at an Islamic State checkpoint. A fighter asked him why he had left and said there was no reason to fear the Islamic State, as long as he played by its rules. 
 
 "All you have to do is put a white flag on the roof of your house and declare you will obey us," Sido quoted the militant as saying. 
 
 When he climbed up to his roof he looked across Sinjar and saw a sea of white flags. 
 
 (Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Paul Taylor) ||||| Yazidi women who fled the violence in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar sit Tuesday at a school where they are taking shelter, in the city of Dohuk in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region. (Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 Stranded on a barren mountaintop, thousands of minority Iraqis are faced with a bleak choice: descend and risk slaughter at the hands of the encircled Sunni extremists or sit tight and risk dying of thirst. 
 
 Humanitarian agencies said Tuesday that between 10,000 and 40,000 civilians remain trapped on Mount Sinjar since being driven out of surrounding villages and the town of Sinjar two days earlier. But the mountain that had looked like a refuge is becoming a graveyard for their children. 
 
 Unable to dig deep into the rocky mountainside, displaced families said they have buried young and elderly victims of the harsh conditions in shallow graves, their bodies covered with stones. Iraqi government planes attempted to airdrop bottled water to the mountain on Monday night but reached few of those marooned. 
 
 “There are children dying on the mountain, on the roads,” said Marzio Babille, the Iraq representative for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). “There is no water, there is no vegetation, they are completely cut off and surrounded by Islamic State. It’s a disaster, a total disaster.” 
 
 Most of those who fled Sinjar are from the minority Yazidi sect, which melds parts of ancient Zoroastrianism with Christianity and Islam. They are considered by the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State to be devil worshippers and apostates. 
 
 Iraqi politician Vian Dakhil makes a raw, emotional plea for the protection of the Yazidi people before Iraqi parliament. (YouTube/Al Sumaria TV) 
 
 The dramatic advance of the extremist Sunni fighters has torn the ethnic and religious fabric of the country, with Christians and Shiites also uprooted from cities and towns. 
 
 The Islamic State’s takeover of Sinjar, the first major setback for Kurdish forces protecting the country’s north, sent about 200,000 people fleeing, according to the United Nations. Some 147,000 have arrived in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, flooding refugee camps. 
 
 Most of those stranded on Mount Sinjar had run out of battery life on their cellphones by Tuesday, but the few that still could communicate gave grim updates. 
 
 On Tuesday, 10 children and one elderly woman died, while on Monday, seven children had perished, said 23-year-old Shihab Balki, who was trapped with his mother, sister and four brothers. “I saw their bodies with my own eyes.” 
 
 He later texted the news of another casualty: a young man who had died of thirst, leaving his wife and five children behind. UNICEF said that 40 children had died after being displaced from their homes in the area in the 48 hours ending Monday night, including an unknown number on the mountain. The agency did not have figures for Tuesday. 
 
 In Baghdad, parliamentarians complained bitterly about the plight of the displaced, their discussions temporarily overshadowing wrangling over the nomination of a prime minister. 
 
 “Children have died because of dehydration and lack of food,” Vian Dakheel, a Yazidi parliamentarian from Sinjar, said through tears. “My people are being slaughtered,” she continued, referring to reports of mass killings of those who had stayed behind. 
 
 The ancient and secretive Yazidi sect, whose members number no more than 600,000 across Iraq, has suffered persecution for centuries. 
 
 Islamic State posted the first pictures of its capture of Sinjar on social networking sites on Tuesday. One showed six men lying face-down in a field, a pistol pointed at the backs of their heads. “Kill them wherever you find them,” read the caption. 
 
 Salem al-Sinjari, a 45-year-old teacher, said he’d seen around 25 bodies piled in the streets as he fled Sunday, leaving early enough to catch a ride to the Kurdish region. His mother, five brothers and two sisters wound up besieged on the mountain. He said he last spoke to them Monday before their last cellphone battery died. 
 
 Iraqi Kurdish security forces known as pesh merga are attempting to secure a road from the mountain to the nearby city of Rabia, but the process involves clearing villages where locals are sympathetic to the militants, said Majid Shingali, another local parliamentarian, who left Sinjar on Saturday. 
 
 Kurdish factions in neighboring Syria say they are entering Iraq to assist this country’s Kurds as they face Islamic State along a 650-mile front. 
 
 The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), designated a terrorist organization by the United States for its armed struggle against the Turkish state, also called for all Kurdish factions to unite against the Sunni extremists. 
 
 Babille, UNICEF’s Iraq representative, said that U.N. agencies have offered the Iraqi government technical assistance with airdrops but have yet to be asked for help. At least 15 to 20 flights would be needed just to provide those stranded with enough water and supplies to survive for a week, he said. 
 
 “We need to get them out,” he said. “If we don’t, it would be catastrophic.” 
 
 Mustafa Salim contributed to this report. ||||| More than 20,000 of the 40,000 trapped by jihadists on a mountaintop have escaped but US considering full-scale rescue 
 
 At least half of the 40,000 people besieged by jihadists on a mountaintop in northern Iraq have escaped in the past 24 hours, aided by Kurdish rebels who crossed from Syria to rescue them. 
 
 The refugees, all members of the Yazidi sect, began streaming back into Iraqi Kurdistan after a perilous journey past Islamic State militants who had vowed to kill them and had surrounded their hideout on Mount Sinjar after storming the area early last Sunday. 
 
 The day-long trek took them first over a mountain range into Syria, then through the Peshkhabour crossing three hours north-west of Irbil, where Kurdish officials were rushing to provide food and shelter. 
 
 Fleeing Yazidis said their escape had been aided by the YPG, a Syrian Kurdish rebel faction, and by US air strikes on Islamic State (Isis) positions that had forced the jihadists to withdraw for around six hours on Saturday. 
 
 Their retreat gave a window for thousands of Yazidis, all desperately low on food and water, to begin streaming down the mile-high mountain and north across the Nineveh plains, which have been an ancient homeland of Iraqi minorities. 
 
 The past week has uprooted Yazidis, Christians, Turkmen and Shabak Shias from lands in which they had lived for several thousand years, in a near-fatal blow to Iraq's pluralist past. Thousands are now sleeping rough in public spaces near Duhok, while others have reached Yazidi villages further to the south, where starved hordes, many in tattered clothes, were carrying plastic bags containing all they could salvage from their homes as the jihadists rampaged towards them. 
 
 Though many Yazidis have now reached safety, the siege of Mount Sinjar is not yet broken; many thousands more are thought to remain on the southern side of the 60-mile-long ridge, unable to reach the safe passage that the Kurdish fighters had secured. 
 
 Thousands of Yazidis trapped in the Sinjar mountains as they tried to escape from Islamic State forces, are rescued by Kurdish peshmerga forces. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images 
 
 Iraq's human rights minister, Muhammad Shia al-Sudani, estimated that around 500 Yazidis had been killed in the past week, many by jihadists when they stormed the city of Sinjar. Others had died of dehydration and disease. 
 
 "We have striking evidence obtained from Yazidis fleeing Sinjar and some who escaped death, and also crime scene images that show indisputably that the gangs of the Islamic State have executed at least 500 Yazidis," he said. 
 
 "Some of the victims, including women and children, were buried alive in scattered mass graves in and around Sinjar." 
 
 Unicef said at least 40 of the dead were children. The figures were impossible to confirm, but matched eyewitness tallies during the desperate days of deprivation on the mountaintop. 
 
 Isis believes Yazidis are devil worshippers and has vowed to kill those who do not convert to Sunni Islam. 
 
 Thousands of Yazidis previously trapped by Isis have been rescued by Kurdish peshmerga forces. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images 
 
 The US military confirmed it had carried out four air strikes on Isis positions on Saturday. Britain said it had airdropped food and water to those still trapped. Iraq and Turkey, along with the US, had also delivered aid. However, Yazidis said much of the food and water dropped by the US using parachutes had disintegrated when it hit the ground. 
 
 Barakat Issa, a Yazidi who arrived in Iraqi Kurdistan on Saturday, began his journey before the mass exodus, when Kurdish guerrillas were still trying to secure a route. 
 
 "It's beyond a catastrophe," he said. "We were escaping death and heading to another death. There was a three-year-old child with me that had to walk eight hours non-stop in very rough terrain. 
 
 "The journey was impossible. Difficult is not even close to describing it. There are two more Yazidi villages still besieged – the people couldn't leave and Isis gave them a deadline that ends very soon to convert to Islam or to face the sword. Even if they convert to Islam, Isis would force the men to join their fighters and give their women to them." 
 
 Yazidis who have fled to Irbil say at least 400 women and children have been captured by jihadists who have taken some to Syria and others to Sinjar. Western officials believe some are being held in schools near the border and are facing demands to convert to Islam. 
 
 Despite the clear danger, desperate hunger drove some of the men who escaped the mountain to attempt to steal food from jihadists along the way. 
 
 "Many died of thirst," said Barakat Issa. "And at night some of the men would sneak towards the surrounding Isis-controlled villages and attempt to steal some cattle to take back to the hungry people, but this created an issue, because red meat makes you thirsty and it's very hard to get water in this mountain." 
 
 An RAF transport aircraft making the first airdrop of British humanitarian aid to refugees fleeing Islamist militants in Iraq. Photograph: Mod Crown Copyright/PA 
 
 Risalah Shirkani, a Yazidi woman who escaped to Duhok, in Iraq's Kurdish north, said: "This is not the first time this has happened to us. History is a witness to that. After this ordeal, Yazidis don't feel safe in Iraq, or even in Kurdistan any more. It's only a matter of time until we all leave. Some of my relatives were kidnapped by Isis. Others were beheaded and yet more fell off the mountain. There were pregnant women giving birth and children dying from dehydration, diarrhoea and fever." 
 
 Issa Pajo, 27, who arrived over the weekend in the town of Duhok, near the Syrian border, said: "We have been on the way for two days until we reached Duhok. The Syrian Kurds treated us well – they gave us food. But we also have nothing here. We don't have a place to sleep and we have not seen any assistance from anyone. Isis destroyed everything. They killed my cousin and looted our houses." 
 
 Another man who made it to Duhok, Ghassan Salim, 40, said: "The situation is critical. It is a human catastrophe. The children are in particular need of urgent assistance. And it is not only Yazidis – all the minorities, like Shabbak, Christians … need desperate help." 
 
 Those who have been unable to leave Mount Sinjar face a perilous journey to reach aid, which according to Barakat Issa is being dropped on a peak that was used by the Iraqi and US militaries. 
 
 "It was a US base and before that it was a missile base during Saddam's time, the same platform he used to launch rockets against Israel. That was the main dropping zone for the aid despite the fact that Isis are not deep in the mountains. 
 
 "The drops didn't reach more than 10% of those who need them. Helicopters and pilots were afraid to come close to the south of the mountain – thousands of people in that part received nothing." 
 
 After more than a week of losing ground, and facing accusations that they had left the Yazidis to their fate, Kurdish forces yesterday regained three villages 25 miles south-west of Irbil, which Isis fighters had been trying to seize. 
 
 Regular peshmerga fighters were vastly outnumbered by irregulars who rushed to the frontline carrying ageing Kalashnikovs. Waiting under the roof of a sprawling checkpoint, just over a mile from the frontline, Rashid Kherjari, a retired peshmerga fighter, said he had five sons further down the road. 
 
 "We have faced three big enemies in my lifetime," he said: Saddam's Ba'athists, the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, and now Isis. "Maliki is the worst," he added. "But we are fighting against blind bats in these guys." 
 
 Jets rumbled in the middle distance and a slow trickle of injured men were ferried by ambulance back from the frontline. 
 
 "We will win this battle," said another volunteer fighter, his belly hanging over his trousers. "All Kurds are peshmerga when it really matters." 
 
 After they had rolled through the Nineveh plains and advanced rapidly towards Irbil, the momentum of the jihadists slowed over the weekend. "The US airstrikes helped, but Isis remains potent," said the Kurdish regional government's former prime minister, Barham Salih. 
 
 Kurdish officials have urged the US to keep up its attacks on the Islamic State, claiming a short campaign could end up empowering the jihadists. 
 
 Yesterday the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, asked the international community to provide the Kurds with weapons to bolster their battle against Isis, whose push has alarmed Baghdad and western countries. 
 
 At a press conference with the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, Barzani said: "We are not fighting a terrorist organisation, we are fighting a terrorist state." 
 
 Additional reporting; Saud al-Murrani and Fazel Hawramy
– The Islamic State regards Iraq's Yazidi minority as devil worshippers, so when militants captured the village of Sinjar this weekend, 60-year-old Yazidi farmer Kareem Sido fled to the mountains with thousands of others. What he found there were people dying of thirst in conditions so dire that he risked the trip home, Reuters reports. Up to 40,000 refugees remain on Mount Sinjar, however, surrounded by the extremists who attacked their village and who have a penchant for beheading dissenters. There is little food or water, and though the UN has offered to drop supplies, it hasn't been asked to do so by the Iraqi government. One witness tells the Washington Post that 10 children and one elderly woman died yesterday and seven children Monday; UNICEF believes 40 children have died since fleeing their village Monday night. "We need to get them out. If we don’t, it would be catastrophic," a UNICEF rep tells the Post. Going home would also spell death: "We would need a miracle to avoid the Islamic State's brutality," says one resident. There are about 308,000 Yazidi in Sinjar’s district; a minority sect of the Kurds, their religion is a combo of ancient Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam. When the Islamic State came to Sinjar on Saturday, 20 Yazidi were killed in a failed defense and 30 more died of unknown causes. Many more fled—the US-trained army fell apart and the Kurdish pershmerga, mobilized to take their place, ran away "without shooting a bullet," one Sinjar resident tells Reuters. The Christian Science Monitor has this primer on the Yazidi people.