Thousands from Iraq flee to Syria

CAMP BAJID KANDALA, Iraq -- With shocked, sunburned faces, men, women and children in dirt-caked clothes limped into a camp for displaced Iraqis, finding safety after harsh days of hiding on a blazing mountaintop after fleeing from the extremist Islamic State group.

Children who died of thirst were left behind; some exhausted mothers abandoned living babies as thousands of Yazidis trekked across a rocky mountain chain in temperatures over 100 degrees, crossing into neighboring Syria and then looping back into Iraq to reach safety at the Bajid Kandala camp.

At least 56 children died in the mountains, Juliette Touma of the U.N. children's agency estimated.

Other Yazidis have settled in refugee camps in Syria: so desperate is their situation, they have sought safety in a country aflame in a civil war.

The displacement of at least tens of thousands of Yazidis -- Kurdish speakers who practice an ancient Mesopotamian faith -- meant yet another Iraqi minority was peeled away as the Islamic State extremists continue their sweep of Iraq, seizing territory they brutally administer.

After a global outcry, the U.S. and Iraqi air force began airdropping food and water to Yazidis stranded on a mountaintop. The British military also helped in the airdrop.

It barely seemed to dent the suffering of the Yazidis in the Bajid Kandala camp, miles from the Iraqi border.

It was already crammed with 30,000 people, squashed into tents lined over rolling hills. Nearby, bulldozers were breaking earth to put up new tents.

Camp guards expected thousands more to arrive by Sunday.

The extended Qassem family from the town of Khanasor arrived on Saturday evening. The children were already sprawled asleep on a mat, oblivious to the noise.

Iraq's Yazidis, who mostly live in a cluster of villages near the Iraq-Syria border, fled Aug. 3, hearing that Islamic State militants were approaching.

Residents rushed in a panic to the nearby mountain chain of Sinjar, said the men of the Qassem family.

They couldn't take the roads because the militants had seized checkpoints once manned by Kurdish forces.

"We were so afraid, everybody only thought of themselves. I even left my uncle behind," said one Qassem family man, Abu Saado, of the panicked flight, pointing to a cross-eyed man sitting beside him.

They rejoined in the mountains.

They were among the 50,000 Yazidis that UNICEF estimated had fled into the mountain chain.

For days, there was no escape as extremists blocked the roads.

"We thought we would die in the mountain, but it was better than them taking our women," said Abu Saado, referring to widespread fears that Yazidi women would be raped or sold off as concubines to the extremists.