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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have rescued two Yazidi men from the grip of the Islamic State (ISIS) after years in captivity, an affiliate of the Iraqi labor ministry confirmed to Rudaw on Sunday. This marks the second such rescue by the SDF in under two weeks.
The individuals, identified by Rudaw by their initials D.R. and O.K., were reunited with their families under the supervision of the Yazidi Affairs Office, an affiliate of the Iraqi ministry of labor.
Born in 2003, D.R. is from the village of Kocho (Kojo), while O.K., born in 2006, hails from the village of al-Wardiya. Both villages are located in the predominantly Yazidi district of Shingal (Shingal) in northern Iraq.
In June 2014, ISIS seized control of large swathes of territory in Iraq’s north and west. A little over a month later, in August, the group launched a wide-scale attack against the Yazidi community in Iraq's northern Shingal.
The rescued captives, D.R. and O.K, “were kidnapped by ISIS militants in 2014,” Sarab Ilias, head of the Yazidis affairs office at the Iraqi ministry of labor told Rudaw on Sunday.
“Unfortunately, during [the military] operations and bombings, D.R. lost a leg and O.K. lost an arm,” Ilias explained, adding that the two men were “reunited with their families,” who currently reside in Shingal and the Qadiya camp located in the Kurdistan Region’s Duhok province.
Notably, this is the second such operation led by the Kurdish-led SDF in less than two weeks.
The SDF in mid-April announced that they had rescued a Yazidi man who had been abducted by ISIS around 11 years ago, when he was just eight years old.
The Kurdish-led force then said that its military units carried out a “special security operation” to free the kidnapped Yazidi identified as O.K.
O.K. was quoted by the SDF statement as sharing the harrowing story of his abduction by ISIS.
“I was born in 2006, and I was just a child when ISIS kidnapped me in 2014. ISIS captured me and my family, but separated me and my brother.”
He said that he was held in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which ISIS in 2014 declared as the capital of its proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Iraq. He remained in Mosul for three months before being separated from his brother and transferred, along with 60 other Yazidi children, to the city of Albu Kamal in eastern Syria.
“After arriving in Al-Bukamal, ISIS subjected us to a three-year religious indoctrination course. I was given the name ‘Osama al-Sinjari.’ Then we were moved to the Syrian desert for another three years of military training,” he recounted.
O.K. noted that near the end of 2024 and “while I was getting treatment at one of the ISIS hideouts in the Homs desert, the hideout was struck by an intense airstrike from the [US-led] Global Coalition [to Defeat ISIS], which resulted in the death of 20 terrorists, including high-ranking commanders.”
“I miraculously survived the bombing,” he said, expressing his relief and gratitude toward the SDF for “liberating him and thousands of other Yazidis, particularly women, from the grip of ISIS.”
ISIS’s 2014 assault on Shingal resulted in the abduction of 6,417 Yazidi women and children, many of whom were subjected to sexual slavery and forced labor. Despite being territorially defeated in Iraq by 2017 and in Syria by 2019, ISIS continues to pose a security threat in the region.
The United Nations has recognized the systematic targeting of the Yazidis as genocide. Up to 200,000 Yazidis were displaced from Shingal, many of whom now live in camps across the Kurdistan Region, particularly in Dohuk province.
As of now, 2,590 Yazidis remain missing, according to the Office of Rescuing Abducted Yazidis, which is affiliated with the Kurdistan Region Presidency.
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