Daesh fighters targeted Yazidis for being “apostates” Yazidis are a religious minority in the Arab world PARIS: France is taking in a new group of Yazidi women and children and helping them settle in the country. France’s interior and foreign ministries said 31 families arrived Thursday in the southern city of Toulouse from Irbil, Iraq. Previous groups of 16 and 28 families arrived in December and May. The Yazidis are a religious minority with unique beliefs that distinguish them from Muslim and Christian worshipers in the region. Daesh militants, who seized control of north Iraq in 2014, said the Yazidis were “apostates” and killed hundreds of men while enslaving thousands of women and children. The UN called the attacks genocide.