VIDEO: Yezidi sisters freed from ISIS in Syria's Baghouz

BAGHOUZ (Kurdistan 24) – Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Friday rescued two Yezidi (Ezidi) sisters and several children from Islamic State fighters in the group's last stronghold in the eastern Syrian town of Baghouz. 

One of the sisters said she was abducted in 2014 in the same vehicle as Ezidi human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nadia Murad, also from their village.

Tayseer and Adeeba, newly freed, described to Kurdistan 24 how they were sold as sex slaves several times by members of the jihadist organization over the past five years. 

“The first one was Abu Karrar, the emir of Tal Afar,“ said Tayseer, who is roughly 17 years old. “He took me from Tal Afar and then he sold me to his cousin.” 

After that, she explained, she was sold to a Kurdish Islamic State militant who subjected her to extremely harsh abuse. “When he raped me, I tried a lot to resist him,“ she continued. “He used to hit me every day.” 

Not long after her rescue, female SDF fighters applauded while Tayseer's long black abaya was removed and burned on the ground at her feet.

The sisters are from the village of Kocho, near Iraq's Ezidi-majority town of Sinjar (Shingal) that was infamously overrun by the Islamic State in 2014. Thousands of men were killed and females taken as sex slaves to be sold throughout Islamic State-held areas in Syria and Iraq.

“When we left Shingal, Nadia Murad was sitting close to me in the same car. There were two Daesh men with us as well,“ Tahseer said. “I remember one of them was intimidating Nadia, then Nadia screamed.”

She said that she had heard nothing about Nadia from that time until her release.

Adeeba, Tayseer’s sister, approximately 15 years old, said that there are still a lot of Ezidi women in Baghouz.

“I spent 17 days in Tal Afar and then we were transferred to a nearby village. After that, trucks and cars came every day and took some of us to several places, some to Mosul and others to Raqqa,” she said.

Tayseer and Adeeba both said they would never forget their pain and said they are very happy to again be free. 

Editing by John J. Catherine

(Reporting in Kurdish by Kurdistan 24 correspondent Akram Saleh)