Smoke rises from a wheat field in Nineveh province, northwest Iraq, June 10, 2019. Photo: Alrafidain
SINJAR, Northwest Iraq,— 500 houses were torched in a conflagration in Giruzer sub-district south of Mount Sinjar on Wednesday, the acting director of Giruzer sub-district Jalal Khalo said.
Sinjar district is home to hundreds of thousands of the Kurdish-speaking Yazidis.
Khalo told NRT TV that several farmlands also caught fire in the area.
“The fire have not been extinguished and despite attempts by the firefighting team and the people,” Khalo added.
There have been sixteen fires in Sinjar district so far since the beginning of the year, as well as 35,000 dunams (86,486,884 acres) of farmlands were torched. Three farmers died while trying to extinguish fires at their farms.
Two farmers died after crop fields caught fire in Sinjar on Saturday night (June 8), as harvests go up in smoke in northern Iraq.
More than 46,000 dunams (11,366,848 acres) were torched in less than a month across Iraq, according to a statement by the Iraqi Civil Defense Directorate on Saturday (June 15).
The federal civil defense also said that there were 303 fires at the farmlands during May 8 to June 14 across Iraq.
Over the last several weeks, Hundreds of hectares of agricultural lands were also burned by suspected Islamic State (ISIS) militants in Kirkuk province and Makhmour, Khanaqin districts and Sinjar districts.
Farmers in the country’s breadbasket had been hoping for bumper wheat and barley harvests in May and June, following heavy winter rains.
Instead, many see their hopes turned to ash.
In August 2014, ISIS militants attacked the Sinjar district, which was home to hundreds of thousands of the Kurdish-speaking Yazidis, whose syncretic religion incorporates many aspects of local faiths. Because of their beliefs, Yazidis were specifically targeted by the hardline Islamist militants for a campaign of horrific violation.
Thousands of Yazidi women were raped and murdered, with many of the survivors sold into sexual slavery and taken away to other parts of Iraq, Syria, and even further afield. Men and boys were systematically murdered, forced to work for the group, or coerced into becoming child soldiers.
It is estimated that 3,000 Yazidis were killed over a period of several days and 6,800 others were abducted.
Although several thousand Yazidis have been rescued over the last four-and-a-half years, another 3,000 remain missing.
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