By Yousif Ahmed and Barakat Isa

DUHOK, Kurdistan Region – Elias Salih has only fate to thank for his life, after being shot twice and left for dead by Islamic State militants who recently massacred 420 Yezidis in the village of Kojo.

The story of this 30-year-old sounds more like a Hollywood movie than actual fact.

He recalled the day that Islamic State (IS/formerly ISIS) militants arrived in his village.

“They asked everyone to gather at the village school. We were told: ‘don’t bring anything with you apart for your wallets, jewelry and ID cards," Salih told Rudaw.

He said the emir of the militants then told those who had refused orders to convert to Islam to leave the village.

"You can go to the Shingal Mountains, but you will have to leave all of your jewelry, money, and cell phones. Bring them all here," the emir told the villagers.

Salih was part of the first group that was loaded into a truck, thinking they were going to the mountain. But when they came off the vehicle they found themselves lined up before several armed fighters, and a cameraman ready to film what would happen next.

"When they took our pictures, we knew we were to be killed." Salih said. Soon after, he heard a masked fighter ordered to “shoot.”

He vividly remembers the cries and screams as people around him fell from the bullets. Next, the fighters went round with handguns and shot the ones who had been wounded but were not dead.

Salih was shot twice -- in the kidney and by a bullet that scraped the left side of his head.

"I remained quiet for 15 minutes,” he recalled. “Then I lifted my head and saw everyone had left the place. I crawled into a grain field, hid in the foothills and then sneaked into a vineyard. I had two other people with me. One of them was seriously injured and did not manage to continue with us. I do not know what happened to him."

"We then arrived in an Arab village, where the residents told us to leave because they did not want ISIS to find out they had given us refuge,” he said.

Until sunset they hid in the bushes, then resumed walking, passing several villages along the way but not daring to enter, fearing they might run into IS fighters.

They finally decided to take the Shingal-Tel Afar road, and walked until they reached areas controlled by the Peshmerga, who received them and took them to a hospital.

Rudaw