ISIL video shows conversion of Yazidis to Islam

Militants of the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant (ISIL) have released a video that seeks to show it enlightened hundreds of members of the Yazidi minority by converting them to Islam.

The production was issued not long after the group on Aug. 19 released a video showing one of its black-clad fighters beheading American journalist James Foley, sparking international outrage.

The Yazidis, followers of an ancient religion derived from Zoroastrianism who are part of the country's Kurdish minority, have paid the highest price for Islamic State's dramatic advance through northern Iraq.

ISIL militants, widely seen as more hardline than al-Qaeda, storm into villages armed with machine guns and give Yazidis a simple choice: convert to Islam or die. Witnesses have said most of their hundreds of victims were shot dead at close range, while others including women and children were buried alive. Women who avoided death were rounded up and taken away as slaves, witnesses said. The threat to the Yazidis was one reason cited by U.S. President Barack Obama when he launched U.S. air strikes against Islamic State in parts of Iraq earlier this month.

The video, which the group called "Hundreds of Yazidis convert to Islam", gives no indication of the bloodshed that prompted tens of thousands of people to flee. In the film, ISIL fighters say they are misunderstood as they sit on a wall in Mount Sinjar, the Yazidis' ancient homeland.

Witnesses earlier told Reuters that residents who dared to stay hung white flags on the homes to show their complete surrender to ISIL, which has declared a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria it controls and threatened to march on Baghdad.

In the video, two ISIL fighters - one a bearded...