People of the Yazidi faith in northern Iraq face an impossible choice : Stay and risk being killed by Islamist insurgents , or flee across the barren desert , facing starvation and thirst . Its hard to imagine the suffering that minority Yazidis have endured in recent weeks as they 've fled from ISIS militants into remote , rugged , sparse mountains . `` With my own eyes , I saw dogs feeding off dead bodies , '' one of those Yazidis , a man named Tariq , told CNN . `` It 's not a crisis . It 's a catastrophe . '' Descendants of Kurds and followers of an ancient pre-Islamic religion , Yazidis are small in number with a big sense of community . Now some of them are under siege or under fire , targeted by ISIS for not succumbing to demands to convert to Islam or else . Others , like Tariq , have managed to find some refuge in recent days , though worries remain about finding the resources they need to survive . Wherever they are , whatever they are doing , Yazidis do n't feel safe or secure or free . They certainly are n't home . Yazidis trapped , hiding from ISIS in the mountains . 'We had nothing ' The 33-year-old Tariq 's nightmare began in his home village of Tal Benat-Sinjar at 9 a.m. on August 3 . That 's when he and others started receiving calls from neighboring villages , telling them `` Daish , '' the Arabic term for ISIS , was on their doorsteps . The choices were simple : Stay , convert to Islam , and become one with ISIS . Stay and risk death or imprisonment , as Tariq said he knew happened to a family of one man , three women and four children . Or run away , in hopes of finding some place they could live safely or , at least , freely away from ISIS ' grasp . More than 300 Yazidi families -- Tariq among them -- picked the third option . Their first refuge was the abandoned ruins of a tiny , old village that had been previously used for herding cattle and sheep and was next to a cement factory . An ISIS messenger caught up with them there to deliver an ultimatum : Convert by noon the next day or die . Tariq and his neighbors fled again , this time up Mount Sinjar . They followed a zig-zagging road five kilometers ( three miles ) up to the mountain 's desolate top . The hundreds of Yazidis , including many elderly and children , had each other . But not much else , having escaped with little more than the clothes on their backs and the bread in their hands . ISIS militants choked off any chance of restocking by surrounding the roads leading up to the mountain . `` At one point , 15 people shared 1.5 gallons of water , '' Tariq recalled . `` We had nothing . '' People drop to ground of hunger . If ISIS fighters did n't kill the Yazidis , their siege did . Tariq 's 80-year-old father was among the dead , dying two days after being stranded on the mountaintop in the extreme heat without anything to eat or drink . He was n't alone . Tariq said he counted between 500 and 1,000 bodies , some of which went from cherished loved ones one moment to food for hungry dogs the next . `` I saw people dropping on the ground from being so tired on their empty stomachs , '' he told CNN . Tariq , at least , is alive . Fighters with the Kurdistan Workers Party -- or PKK , which the U.S. State Department labels a terrorist group though they now share a common enemy in ISIS -- were able to break the siege so that he and other Yazidis could safely escape . The subsequent journey took them through parts of northern Iraq , across the border into Syria , then eventually back to Iraq . Their last stop -- for now -- is a village in Dhok province that Tariq characterized as being `` in the middle of nowhere . '' Still , even if he 's safe for now , the danger has n't gone away . First off , ISIS has n't backed off . The U.S. military noted Saturday that the militants `` indiscriminately attacked '' Yazidis near the SInjar Mountains , prompting American airstrikes . Officials : U.S. airstrikes pound ISIS . Attacks are n't the only reasons Yazidis ' lives are at risk . Thousands of them do n't have the food or water they need , especially in Iraq 's scorching summer . `` There are more than 20,000 families still stranded on the mountain in more remote areas , '' Tariq said . `` If no one gets them food or water in time , they will face death . ''
Thousands of minority Yazidis have fled from ISIS into remote Iraqi mountains . Islamic militants told them to convert to Islam , be imprisoned or die . One Yazidi recalls fleeing ISIS in the heat of summer , without food or drink . Score: 6