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Iraqi Yazidi families who fled the violence in Sinjar are given food at a school in the Kurdish city of Dohuk on August 5, 2014.
- Thousands of families from Iraq's Yazidi minority flee as Islamist fighters storm their community
- Yazidi lawmaker says 70 children have died of thirst, 500 men have been slaughtered
- UNICEF warns that up to 25,000 children are stranded in the mountains without food, water
- Amnesty International appeals to Iraqi and Kurdish authorities to protect Yazidis
(CNN) -- When radical Islamist fighters stormed the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar over the weekend, the Yazidi minority who call it home fled into the surrounding mountains in fear of their lives.
Now, trapped without food, water or medical care in the summer heat, thousands of families are in desperate need of help.
It's already too late to save dozens of children who've died of thirst.
They are the latest victims of the brutal advance by the Islamic State, formerly the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, whose Sunni Muslim fighters have been targeting Iraq's Christians and other minority groups, as well as Shiite Muslims.
Lawmaker Vian Dakhil, the only MP representing the Yazidi minority group in Iraq's Parliament, said in an impassioned speech that 70 Yazidi children had died so far, that women were being killed or sold into slavery and that 500 men had been "slaughtered."
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An Iraqi child walks through a displacement camp Saturday, June 28, in Khazair, Iraq. Vast swaths of northern Iraq, including the cities of Mosul and Tal Afar, have fallen as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, advances toward Baghdad, the capital. The ISIS militants want to establish a caliphate, or Islamic state, in the region, stretching from Iraq into northern Syria.
An Iraqi woman walks with her child outside of a displacement camp on June 28 in Khazair, now home to an estimated 1,500 internally displaced persons.
Peshmerga fighters, or Kurdish warriors, check cars at the entrance to a temporary displacement camp in Khazair, Iraq, for people caught in the fighting in and around the city of Mosul on Thursday, June 26.
A group of women wait outside the temporary displacement camp in Khazair on June 26.
Smoke rises in the Karakus district of Mosul as clashes between Iraqi forces and ISIS militants on June 26.
Food is handed out at the displacement camp in Khazair.
A child walks over discarded water bottles and trash at a registration area at the displacement camp in Khazair on June 26.
Kurdish Peshmerga take their positions behind a wall on the front line of the conflict with ISIS militants in Tuz Khormato, Iraq, on Wednesday, June 25.
Peshmerga fighters clean their weapons at a base in Tuz Khormato, Iraq, on June 25.
Female Peshmerga between 18 and 45 years old form a special unit that is called to serve in any conditions. A soldier is pictured here on June 25.
A woman gathers bread in a temporary displacement camp for Iraqis caught up in the fighting in and around Mosul on Tuesday, June 24.
An ISIS fighter takes control of a traffic intersection in Mosul on Sunday, June 22.
An ISIS member distributes a copy of the Quran, Islam's holy book, to a driver in Mosul on June 22.
Members of ISIS patrol in Falluja, 40 miles west of Baghdad, on Saturday, June 21.
Volunteers raise their weapons and chant slogans during a parade in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City, Baghdad, on Saturday, June 21.
Iraqi men register to volunteer to fight alongside security forces against Sunni Muslim militants and jihadists on Friday, June 20, at a recruitment center in Baghdad.
New Iraqi army recruits gather in Najaf on Wednesday, June 18, following a call for Iraqis to take up arms against Islamic militant fighters.
Soldiers with an Iraqi anti-terrorism unit are on guard June 18 in Baghdad.
A Kurdish Peshmerga fighter injured in clashes with members of ISIS lies in a hospital in Irbil on June 18.
An MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter lands on the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday, June 17. The carrier moved into the region to give President Barack Obama "additional flexibility," the Pentagon has said.
Newly recruited Iraqi volunteer fighters take part in a training session in Karbala on June 17.
Iraqi tribesmen gather in Baghdad on Monday, June 16, to show their readiness to join Iraqi security forces in the fight against Islamic militants.
Iraqi Christian children gather inside the Church of the Virgin Mary for prayers in Bartala, Iraq, a town near Mosul, on Sunday, June 15. Militants seized Mosul last week, reportedly leading more than 500,000 people to flee Iraq's second-largest city.
Shiite tribal fighters raise their weapons and chant slogans against ISIS in Basra, Iraq, on June 15.
Members of ISIS prepare to execute some soldiers from Iraq's security forces in this image, one of many reportedly posted by the militant group online. CNN cannot independently confirm the authenticity of the images.
A woman cradles her baby Thursday, June 12, at a temporary camp set up in Aski Kalak, Iraq, to shelter those fleeing the violence in northern Nineveh province.
A girl fleeing from Mosul arrives at a Kurdish checkpoint on June 12.
Iraqi men chant slogans outside of an army recruiting center to volunteer for military service June 12 in Baghdad.
Kurdish Peshmerga forces, along with Iraqi special forces, deploy their troops and armored vehicles outside of Kirkuk, Iraq, on June 12.
Children stand next to a burnt vehicle during clashes between Iraqi security forces and ISIS militants in Mosul on Tuesday, June 10.
Civilians from Mosul escape to a refugee camp near Irbil, Iraq, on June 10.
Iraqis fleeing the violence wait in their vehicles at a Kurdish checkpoint in Aski Kalak on June 10.
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Photos: Iraq under siege
Tearfully appealing to lawmakers for help, she warned that the Islamic State was trying to wipe her community out.
"There is a collective attempt to exterminate the Yazidi people," she said.
"Similar to the fate of every other Iraqi, my people are being killed. The Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, Turkmen, Shabak people have been killed -- and now the Yazidi people are being killed."
Yazidis, among Iraq's smallest minorities, are of Kurdish descent, and their religion is considered a pre-Islamic sect that draws from Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism.
One of the oldest religious communities in the world, they have long suffered persecution, with many Muslims referring to them as devil-worshippers.
'Come to our rescue'
Dakhil is not alone in highlighting the desperate plight of the sect, most of whose 500,000 or so members live in and around Sinjar in northwestern Nineveh province, bordering Iraq's Kurdish region.
The U.N. children's agency, UNICEF, said Tuesday that official reports indicated 40 children from the Yazidi minority had died "as a direct consequence of violence, displacement and dehydration" since the weekend.
"Families who fled the area are in immediate need of urgent assistance, including up to 25,000 children who are now stranded in mountains surrounding Sinjar and are in dire need of humanitarian aid including drinking water and sanitation services," it said.
Dakhil gave a similarly awful account.
"Over the course of 48 hours, 30,000 families are stranded in the Sinjar Mountains with no water and food. They are dying -- 70 kids so far died from thirst and suffocation," she said.
"Fifty old men died due to the deteriorating situation. Our women are being captured and sold as slaves."
As Dakhil, an MP for the Kurdistan Alliance list of Nineveh, Sinjar and Chenkal and chairman of a parliamentary committee for construction, addressed the Speaker, fellow lawmakers could be seen standing silently in solidarity.
"Brothers, let's put our political differences aside and work together as human beings," she pleaded. "In the name of humanity, come to our rescue, come to our rescue."
Reports of killings, abductions
Rights group Amnesty International said Tuesday that fighters from the Islamic State continue to surround the mountain area where the Yazidis and other Iraqis who fled the Sinjar area are hiding.
Kurdish fighters battled the militants on Monday in an attempt to retake Sinjar, a Kurdish commander said, and have been engaged in house-to-house combat in some of the fiercest fighting since the fall of Iraq's second city, Mosul, to the Islamic militant group in June.
Hundreds of missing civilians, mainly men but also women and children, are reported to have been killed or captured, Amnesty International said.
One relative told the group that the fighters had abducted or killed more than 30 members of two families from the village of Khana Sor, north-west of Sinjar close to the Syrian border.
"We urge the international community to provide humanitarian assistance, while the Iraqi and Kurdish authorities must spare no effort to ensure that much-needed aid is delivered to the displaced civilians and that they are protected from further ISIS attacks on the ground," said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International's senior crisis response adviser, who is currently in northern Iraq.
The U.S. State Department said Sunday that it was "actively monitoring the situation" in Sinjar, as well as the city of Tal Afar to the east, and that the United States is supporting both Iraqi security forces and Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the fight against the Islamic State.
Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the militants' assault, "focusing on towns and villages populated by vulnerable minorities, demonstrates once again that this terrorist organization is a dire threat to all Iraqis, the entire region and the international community."
MAPS: Understanding the crisis
READ: Official: Kurdish forces fend off ISIS fighters, hold Mosul Dam
READ: Terror havens in Syria and Iraq: Five reasons the West should worry
CNN's Hamdi Alkhshali, Mohammed Tawfeeq, Khushbu Shah and Maryam Affane contributed to this report.
