Half of Izadis kidnapped by Daesh still missing: Kurdish official
Around half of the members of the Izadi minority group kidnapped by the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group three years ago are still missing, Iraqi Kurdish officials say.
Khairi Bozani, a top official with the ministry of religious affairs of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, said some 6,417 Izadis had been abducted by Daesh terrorists since August 3, 2014.
Up until December 1, 2017, only 3,207 of them had been rescued or managed to escape, the official added.
Bozani said the remaining 3,210 Izadis were still either held by the terrorists or considered missing. The figures include 1,507 women or girls. In addition, 2,525 Izadi children are now orphans while the parents of 220 others are still unaccounted for.
According to Bozani, nearly four dozen mass graves containing the remains of Izadi people have been found in recent years.
Iraqi pro-government fighters from the Popular Mobilization Units recently found two mass graves in the country’s northern province of Nineveh, which contain the bodies of more than a hundred of Izadis believed to have been executed by Daesh terrorists.
Back in August 2014, Daesh overran the town of Sinjar, killing, raping, and enslaving large numbers of Izadi Kurds. The region was recaptured in November 2015, during an operation by Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Izadi fighters.
The Endowments and Religious Affairs Ministry of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government announced in early August that Daesh’s genocide against Izadis had forced nearly 360,000 members of the minority group to flee their hometowns, and that another 90,000 had left Iraq and taken refuge in other countries.
It added that Daesh terrorists had kidnapped 6,417 Izadi Kurds, including 1,102 women and 1,655 children, since 2014.
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