With the offensive to liberate Hawija underway, hundreds of thousands of people have become displaced from family members who remain in the strategic ISIS-held city between Kirkuk and Nineveh. One family has partially been able to physically escape the city that was besieged by ISIS in 2014.
With one sister and their father still believed to be in ISIS territory, one of Um Jassim’s daughters has arrived with her in a camp in Kirkuk, where more than 170 women were once ISIS wives.
A woman in the camp says she was married off to an ISIS militant and recently gave birth.
“I know the child’s father is an Iraqi ISIS. But I don’t know him,” she said, adding she has made the decision to not raise the child herself.
These women are now facing a variety of psychological problems and will require assistance.
Kirkuk is heavily burdened due to the influx of more than half a million IDPs because of the war with ISIS, according to its governor.
Kurdish authorities have hoped for a speedy campaign in Hawija, so its residents are able to return, but local police have said they expect ISIS to implement an insurgency because the group had more than two years, and has long been an area steeped in sectarian tension.
