Over 80 Yazidis killed in Iraq

Baghdad: Islamic State (IS) militants have massacred at least 80 men from the Yazidi faith and abducted women and children in a village in northern Iraq, a media report said Saturday.

Senior Kurdish leader Hoshyar Zebari said the men were killed in two groups by the IS militants who arrived in Kawju Friday on a column of vehicle, BBC reported.

A US drone strike later destroyed two vehicles from the convoy near another village, he said.

The militants reportedly told men to convert to Islam or die.

Hoshyar Zebari, who was until recently Iraq's foreign minister, confirmed the attack.

He told BBC that a US drone strike was directed at two of the vehicles near the village of Salhieh.

The US military confirmed the destruction of the two IS vehicles by drones near Sinjar Friday morning, after receiving reports from Kurdish forces that the militants were attacking civilians.

Zebari added that Kawju and other Yazidi villages had been reassured by nearby Sunni Muslim villages that they would protect them from harm, but were unable to keep those assurances when IS decided to attack.

The killings took place over the space of an hour, said a Yazidi MP, Mahama Khalil.