Kurdistan Region announces the rescue of 4 Yezidi women, children

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – On Thursday, the office of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) dedicated to the rescue of the Yezidi (Ezidi) religious minority captured by the Islamic State starting in 2014 announced the rescue of four previously kidnapped women and children who were found in a displacement camp in Syria.

Hussein Qaedi, head of the Ezidi Rescue Office, said in a statement that “specialized committees are continuously tasked with liberating the kidnapped Ezidis despite the coronavirus crisis and the suspension of movement.”

He further explained that the women and children were being held among tens of thousands of families, many of them overt Islamic State sympathizers, at the sprawling al-Hol Camp, run by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). According to the statement, their return took about three weeks to facilitate.

“The office will continue its efforts in following up the cases until the last kidnapped Ezidi is found and rescued, as promised by Nechirvan Barzani, President of the Kurdistan Region,” Qaedi added, echoing previous statements.

Read More: We will continue until the last kidnapped Yezidi is rescued: KRG official

He also mentioned that the number of those who had been rescued from Islamic State captivity has so far reached 3,532 individuals, most of them women and children. Some 2,800 individuals remain missing.

The emergence of the Islamic State and its violent assault on Iraq’s Ezidi-majority city of Sinjar (Shingal) in August 2014 led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of members of the community and the killing of thousands. Fighters from the group, which sees Yezidis as infidels, kidnapped 6,284 members of their community, including 3,467 women and 2,717 men.

Since then, the KRG has used extensive resources to find and rescue them, creating a special committee with a budget allocated for information gathering and to follow up on the various cases.

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

Editing by John J. Catherine