ERBIL — More than seven years since the Islamic State (IS) massacre against the Kurdish Yezidis in Sinjar, the religious minority community is yet to overcome the physical and psychological traumas. In a most recent revelation, a Kurdish official said several Yezidi women were fed with the flesh from their slaughtered children in 2014.
IS militants overran Sinjar, northwest of Mosul, on 3 August 2014 after taking swathes of territories in Syria and Iraq. As soon as they entered the area, they rounded up Yezidi women, men, and children, killed the men immediately and took the women and children to force them into slavery later. According to the latest updates, over 3,500 Yezidi abductees, out of 6,417, have been rescued so far, but the fate of the others remain unknown.
Ala Talib, a representative of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Tel Afar, recalled the tragic days in an interview with BasNews, saying that 30 Yezidi women, together with their children, were moved from Sinjar to Tel Afar during the first days of the IS attack. They were then separated and denied food for two days.
“They kept the abductees hungry for two days and then offered them food, containing meat. The women ate the meal and only then the IS terrorist told them that the meat was their children,” Talib said, noting that this was just one example of horrific actions of IS militants against Yezidi women.
This is not the first time officials confirm Yezidi women being forced or deceived to eat their children. Back in 2017, Kurdish member of the Iraqi Parliament, Vian Dakhil, revealed that a Yazidi woman was made to eat her own one-year-old child by the terror group members. According to MP Dakhil, the woman who was left to starve for days was finally provided food by IS and after she ate it, she was told it was indeed her one-year-old child who was served to her with rice.
Tel Afar, located 63 km west of Mosul and 52 km east of Sinjar, was the main IS hub for keeping Yezidi women and children before transferring them to Raqqa and other cities in Syria, where the majority of young women were sold as sex slaves. Many of the rescued Yezidi women have confirmed that the extremist group had turned a school in Tel Afar into a prison for the abductees. They were later separated from children and the young women were singled out to be sent to Syria.