蜜芽传媒

Among the many victims of the advance of The Islamic State (IS) in the Middle East are a group of up to 50,000 Yazidis. In August 2014 they fled IS and were consequently trapped in the mountains around Sinjar in northwest Iraq without food or water. Many were killed or captured and enslaved. Airstrikes led by the Unites States, and an offensive led by Kurdish peshmerga forces, has now helped break the IS stranglehold of Sinjar. The fate of many Yazidis, however, is still unknown but a UN report into the atrocities says IS had "the intent... to destroy the Yazidi as a group." Vice News photographer Freddie Paxton captures Sinjar before and after.