Nearly 3,000 Yazidis still missing: Official

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Nearly 3,000 Yazidis kidnapped during the Islamic State’s (ISIS) brutal rule in Iraq remain missing with an unknown fate over a decade after jihadists invaded their heartland, an official affiliated with the Kurdistan Region Presidency said on Sunday.

Statistics from the Office of Rescuing Abducted Yazidis, affiliated with the Kurdistan Region Presidency, showed that the fate of 2,832 members of the ethnoreligious community remains unknown.

Nearly 5,000 have also died, leaving behind 2,745 orphaned children.

“We have worked on various cases, including those related to Iraq, Syria, Rojava [northeast Syria], and foreign countries,” Hussein Qaidi, head of the office, told Rudaw. “In the coming days, we will rescue another person and announce their return.”

In February, a Yazidi woman from Shingal (Sinjar) kidnapped by ISIS was rescued by the office and returned to her family after over ten years in captivity.

The office has also documented 93 mass graves of Yazidi Kurds who were killed by ISIS militants between 2014 and 2017.

The remains of 274 abductees killed by ISIS have been recovered and returned to their families, including 37 women and 237 men, the office added.

In its assault on Shingal in 2014, ISIS militants abducted 6,417 Yazidi women and children, many of whom were subjected to sexual slavery and forced labor. Although the group was territorially defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019, it continues to pose a security risk.

Many Yazidi women and children have been rescued from al-Hol, the notorious camp in northeast Syria that houses tens of thousands of ISIS families and supporters. Others have been found in areas of Syria controlled by rebels or Turkish-backed armed groups, and some have been located in third countries.