DHAKA: Residents of a besieged Iraqi town say they have prepared graves for their families and will kill their wives and children if the city falls to the Islamic State group.

The Shia Turkmen of Amerli, a town in the north of Iraq, are resisting Islamic State fighters who have surrounded them for two months. On Saturday, the Iraqi army and Shia militiamen launched an offensive to break the siege, but the fate of those inside still hangs in the balance.

Residents told Al Jazeera that they would rather kill themselves than fall into the hands of the Islamic State group, which has been accused of murdering those from religious minorities. The US and its allies last month intervened to break the siege of thousands of Yazidi tribesmen who were besieged on Sinjar mountain by the Islamic State.

"In every three to four houses we have dug graves. If the Islamic State storms our town everyone will be killing their wives and children and they will bury them," says Mehdi, a government employee reached by phone in Amerli. 

Mehdi, who asked for his real name to be withheld, said their wives had agreed they would rather die than be taken captive by the group. "They say ‘we don’t want to end up in the hands of the Islamic State, being enslaved like those in Sinjar mountain….We don’t want the Islamic State to lay their hands on us.’”

Women who have been airlifted from Amerli to Baghdad this week said the only question among their female relatives was whether they would have someone shoot them or do it themselves, reports Aj-Jazeera.

"All the women will kill themselves – either shoot themselves or use kerosene and burn themselves to death," said Fatima Qassim, a beauty salon owner from Amerli.

BDST: 1048 HRS, AUG 31, 2014