The Iraqi government’s Directorate of Survivors Affairs of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has handed over a woman and a girl to their families after ten years of captivity under the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Tawaf Daud, 24, from Gruzer community and Khunav, 10, from Kojo, arrived in Sinjar district on Monday and were handed over to their relatives, according to Shahab Ahmad, head of the office of survivors’ affairs in Shingal (Sinjar), home for the non-Muslim Ezidi community.
"Both were rescued from Al-Hol camp (northern Syria) by the Women's Resistance Units with the assistance of the country's national agency," Shahab said.
Al-Hol camp, east of al-Hasaka Kurdish province in northern Syria, is home for about 72,000 people affiliated to IS fighters, almost 30,000 of them are Iraqi women and children. Others are Syrian and other nationalities. Occasionally, Ezidi women and children are found in the camp and sent back to Iraq.
"After the procedures are completed, the girl and the lady will be sent back to their relatives in the Kurdistan Region," Shahab added.
“The return of these survivors is a new hope for the abductees... Their freedom reminds us that injustice does not last and the challenge ends in victory and the return to normal life.”
On August 3, 2014, ISIS attacked Shingal, took control of the city and surrounding villages, took 6,417 Ezidis (Yazidis) as captives, including women and children, the fate of more than 2,600 abductees is still unknown.
Kidnapped Yazidi girls and women faced torture, slavery and sexual assault by the extremist militants of IS, after being trafficked, and the children of the religious community were forcibly recruited through the organization's intellectual education and after forcing them to convert to Islam.
Amid the attacks of IS; 1,293 Ezidis were killed, 68 shrines were destroyed and over 80 mass graves have been discovered, an atrocity that forced 450,000 to leave their homelands, a mass exodus the United Nations UN described it as genocide.
