KIRKUK // ISIL has freed more than 200 members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority it held captive for months, a commander in the Kurdish peshmerga security forces said on Wednesday.
The group, which also included two Christians, was handed over to Kurdish forces near the city of Kirkuk. Some were too exhausted and disoriented to speak.
“We have received 227 Yazidis, among them women and children,” said Major General Westa Rasul.
“We negotiated for days with tribal sheikhs in Hawijah and were able to free the kidnapped Yazidis,” he added, referring to an ISIL-controlled town in the northern province of Kirkuk.
The Yazidis were actually freed on Monday in Nineveh province, north-west of Kirkuk, but did not make their way to a Kurdish-controlled territory until two days later, Maj Gen Rasul said.
One elderly woman said she had been captured by the insurgents last August when they overpowered Kurdish forces in the Sinjar area and proceeded to purge its Yazidi population, killing hundreds and taking thousands captive.
The woman said she had told her son and two young daughters to run away as the militants closed in, but stayed behind herself because she was unwell and did not want to slow them down.
“I had lost hope of seeing my children again, but today it has happened,” she said as they embraced her and wept.
It was not clear why ISIL had decided to release the Yazidis, whom it considers devil-worshippers, but it comes after the extremist group set free some 200 mainly elderly Yazidis in January.
Some of those freed on Monday said they had been held in the ISIL stronghold of Tel Afar for most of their time in captivity, but in the days leading up to their release, they were moved from one town to another in the extremist group’s self-proclaimed caliphate.
The Yazidis thought they were being led to their execution, but instead, were piled onto a minibus that drove them to peshmerga positions in batches. Yazidi community leaders were there to receive them and an ambulance was on standby.
Yazidi activists say many remain in the hands of ISIL, which has often subjected women to rape or sexual slavery. The United Nations said last month that the extremist group may have committed genocide against the minority.
The Yazidis are an ancient, predominantly Kurdish people who follow their own religion derived from Islam, Christianity and Zoroastrianism.
A sweeping ISIL offensive overran large areas north and west of Baghdad last June, while a second drive in August targeted areas in the north that were home to many of Iraq’s minorities.
The Yazidis, who are neither Muslims nor Arabs, were hit harder than others.
They looked in danger of being wiped out of their ancestral land until a US-led air campaign turned the tide on ISIL advances in northern Iraq.
* Agence France-Presse and Reuters
