Two Yezidis rescued from Syria’s eastern town of Baghouz: Rescue Office

The Kurdistan Region’s office dedicated to the rescue of Yezidis (Ezidis) kidnapped by the Islamic State announced on Tuesday that they had brought back two more Ezidis who were abducted in mid-2014.

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region’s office dedicated to the rescue of Yezidis (Ezidis) kidnapped by the Islamic State announced on Tuesday that they had brought back two more Ezidis who were abducted in mid-2014.

The office announced the rescue of “Suad Rasho Ibrahim, aged 15, from Rambusi area, and 10-year-old Julien Alaa Elias, who is from the center of Shingal [Sinjar],” a statement Hussein Qaedi, the head of the office, issued read.

Related Article: Another Yezidi family rescued from last ISIS-held territory in Syria

He mentioned that they were rescued from the eastern town of Baghouz in Syria.

The US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launched a military operation in Baghouz on Feb. 9 to liberate the last pocket the Islamic State holds in the war-torn country.

“Since the start of the operation to liberate Baghouz, more than 20 kidnapped Ezidis, most of them children, had been rescued,” Qaidi added.

Related Article: ISIS killed my father, took my mother: Traumatized Yezidi children share tragic abduction stories

Since 2014, the office has saved over 3,000 Ezidis of both genders out of the 6,417 Ezidis the terrorists kidnapped.

The emergence of the Islamic State and its violent assault on Shingal in 2014 led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Ezidis. Most of them fled to the Kurdistan Region, while others resettled to neighboring countries in the region or Western states.

Others were not as lucky and remained stranded in the war zone, where they experienced atrocities and mass executions at the hands of the extremist group for years. Militants subjected women and girls to sexual slavery, kidnapped children, forced religious conversions, executed scores of men, and abused, sold, and trafficked females across areas they controlled in Iraq and Syria.

Before the 2014 attack, there were roughly 550,000 Ezidis in the Kurdistan Region and Iraq. As the militant group took over large swaths of territory in Nineveh province, 360,000 Ezidis escaped and found refuge elsewhere, according to the Ezidi Rescue Office.

So far, 69 mass graves which contain the remains of Ezidis have been excavated along with untold numbers of individual graves.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany