Nearly 3,000 Yazidis abducted by Islamic State still missing: KRG official
Displaced Yazidi Kurds, fleeing violence from Islamic State group in Sinjar, northwest Iraq, August 10, 2014. Photo: Reuters
HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Coordinator for International Advocacy Dindar Zebari said on Sunday that 2,913 out of the 6,284 Yazidis who were abducted by Islamic State (IS/ISIS) militants remain missing.
Zebari that 3,371 Yazidis had been rescued from the Islamic State (IS) until the March 4, 2019
According to Zebari, the Islamic State had kidnapped 6,284 Yazidis, among them 3,467 females, and 2,717 males.
“The government offers money as a reward for the rescue of Yazidi women and information regarding their whereabouts,” Zebari stated.
The KRG has used every resource available to find and rescue them, creating a special committee with an allocated budget for information gathering and to follow-up on the missing cases, he added.
“Furthermore, the KRG has established special social programs for their psychological rehabilitation to ease and assist in their reintegration.”
He also said that unstable conditions in Sinjar made it difficult for people to return there permanently.
“800 families have returned to the refugee camps in Duhok after the arrival of the Hashd al-Shaabi [Popular Mobilization forces], the presence of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and conflicts in the area,” he said.
Dindar Zebari, the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government’s Coordinator for International Advocacy, 2018. Photo: Zebari’s FB
In August 2014, the Islamic State ISIS militants attacked the Sinjar district, which was home to hundreds of thousands of Yazidis, after Massoud Barzani’s KDP peshmerga forces withdrew from the area without a fight leaving behind the Yazidi civilians to IS killing and genocide.
An unpublished report by Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government KRG reportedly reveals that an 18,000 peshmerga forces of KRG were on the spot and retreat without mounting any defense when Islamic state IS attacked the Yazidi area of Sinjar.
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.
The Yazidis are a Kurdish speaking religious group linked to Zoroastrianism and Sufism. The religious has roots that date back to ancient Mesopotamia, are considered heretics by the hard-line Islamic State group.
Some 600,000 Yazidis live in villages in Iraqi Kurdistan region and in Kurdish areas outside Kurdistan region in around Mosul in Nineveh province, with additional communities in Transcaucasia, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey and Syria. Since the 1990s, the Yazidis have emigrated to Europe, especially to Germany. There are almost 1.5 million Yazidis worldwide.
(With files from nrttv.com | kuristan24.net | agencies)
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