Your trusted source

Militants in northern Iraq have massacred at least 80 men from the Yazidi faith in a village and abducted women and children, the BBC reported.

Islamic State (IS) fighters entered Kocho, 45km (30 miles) from Sinjar, on Friday afternoon, reportedly telling men to convert to Islam or die.

The group's atrocities against non-Sunni Muslims have shocked the international community into action.

In New York, the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on IS members.

In another development, the US military said two of its drones had attacked and destroyed two vehicles identified as belonging to IS near Sinjar on Friday morning, after receiving reports from Kurdish forces that the militants were attacking civilians in the village of Kawju.

Kurdish officials confirmed the attack on Kocho after it was reported by Yazidi activists based in Washington.

"They arrived in vehicles and they started their killing this afternoon," senior Kurdish official Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters news agency on Friday.

The killings took place over the space of an hour, said a Yazidi MP, Mahama Khalil, who reportedly spoke to survivors.

A resident of a nearby village said an IS fighter from the same area had given him details of the bloodshed.

"He told me that the Islamic State had spent five days trying to persuade villagers to convert to Islam and that a long lecture was delivered about the subject today," said the villager.

"He then said the men were gathered and shot dead. The women and girls were probably taken to [the city of] Tal Afar because that is where the foreign fighters are."

Hadi Pir, a Yazidi activist and member of the Yazidi Crisis Management Team in the US, also said a deadline to convert had been given to the villagers.

The villagers were assembled at Kocho's only school, after which the men were shot, the activists said. Remaining villagers were then put on buses for an unknown destination.