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Yazidi refugees were lined up, shot dead, then bulldozed into mass graves
At least ten men at the village of Hardan were beheaded
Jihadists came into villages and selected women at will to make slaves

Published: 16:22 GMT, 14 October 2014 | Updated: 23:09 GMT, 14 October 2014

Thousands of Yazidi men in Iraq were murdered in scenes reminiscent of the Bosnian Srebrenica massacre when Islamic State jihadists swept through in August, according to researchers.

Tens of thousands of Yazidi refugees took up residence at make-shift sites and villages across the Kurdish region of northern Iraq after fleeing across Mount Sinjar in August - but equal numbers remained trapped behind the Isil lines.

Researchers, piecing together reports of attacks, have now concluded that more than 5,000 Yazidi were gunned down in a series of massacres by jihadist.

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Thousands of Yazidi men in Iraq were murdered in scenes reminiscent of the Bosnian Srebrenica massacre when Islamic State jihadists swept through in August, according to researchers

Tragic: Most of the Yazidis are now displaced in northern Iraq, many having lost loved ones in their flight to safety. Some say that women and girls were snatched during the militant raid

A further 5-7,000 women are also being held in makeshift detention centres, where they either been taken away and sold into slavery or handed over to jihadists as concubines.

Five detention centres in the town of Tal Afar is thought to hold around 3,500 women and children.

Due to the magnitude of the killings and enslavement they occurred largely unreported, but now United Nationals researchers have verified many of the tales of horror.

Bakat Khalaf, 60, said 14 of his family were missing or kidnapped, including his son.

Khartun Yusef said her daughter and four granddaughters were being detained in Tal Afar. Her son managed to get away with her to Mount Sinjar, but he was shot and killed when they tried to return home for supplies.

Her other son, who is 18, had been captured by jihadists.

The UN researchers have been collecting accounts of the Isil incursions.

It says that 250-300 men were killed in Mr Khalaf's village, Hardan, including ten that were beheaded. Another 400 were gunned down in the village of Khocho; Isil shelling killed another 200 civilians in the village of Adnaniya and 70-90 men were shot in a ditch in the village of Quinyeh.

On another road, out of al-Shimal village, near to Sinjar town, witnesses reported seeing dozens of bodies.

Researchers said hundreds more men had been killed for refusing to convert to Islam.

Shelter: Iraqi Yazidis who fled the city of Sinjar and nearby towns take shelter at a school in Dahuk, north Iraq

Some of the killing were brutally simplistic, with people being lined up at checkpoints, shot dead, then bulldozed into mass graves. Others were herded into temples which were late blown up.

Matthew Barber, a scholar of Yazidi history at the University of Chicago who was in Kurdistan as the assaults happened, said it was thought 3-5,000 men had been killed.

Some 4,800 women and children were thought to be held captive, and that number was expected to rise above 7,000.

Mr Barber told The Telegraph: 'In every place where Yazidi women or families are held, jihadists come and randomly select women that they take away.'

The jihadists claim justification through accounts of seizures of women in the early days of Muslim expansion in the 7th Century.

An open letter to Isil by Islamic scholars last month took Isil to task over the Yazidis, insisting that: "The reintroduction of slavery is forbidden in Islam. It was abolished by universal consensus."

Meanwhile, a magazine purportedly published by the terror group, Dabiq, released on Sunday attempts to justify the militants' snaring of thousands of innocent Yazidis during an assault on the Iraqi city of Sinjar in August.