The 30-year-old Yazidi woman is seen embracing a family member on January 5, 2025, after being rescued from Idlib. Photo: Rudaw
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A Yazidi woman kidnapped by the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014 reunited with her family in Shingal’s Kocho village on Sunday after being rescued from Syria’s northwestern Idlib province last month.
S.K, the 30-year-old Yazidi woman was rescued from Idlib with the assistance of the Office of Rescuing Abducted Yazidis, an organization affiliated with the Kurdistan Region Presidency, office head Hussein Qaidi told Rudaw.
She was kidnapped along with five of her sisters and nearly 700 other women when ISIS militants overran her village on August 15, 2014. She was moved through several locations before ending up in Idlib.
Initially believing she would be taken to Mount Shingal, she was instead transported to Mosul, ISIS’s former stronghold in Iraq. From there, she was moved to Tal Afar in western Mosul and eventually to Raqqa, the group’s former capital in Syria.
“They took me to Mosul and put me in a hall,” she told Rudaw. “I told them that I am sick, take me back to my parents and find my parents, and they took me to Tal Afar and after three months we tried to escape but they sensed us and brought several buses to take us to Raqqa.”
She is the second Yazidi woman to be rescued from Idlib in under a month, after a 29-year-old was rescued on December 9.
ISIS’s assault on Sinjar in 2014 led to the abduction of 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 security risks through sporadic attacks and abductions in the region.
To date, 3,581 Yazidis have been rescued, but 2,590 individuals are still missing, according to statistics provided by Qaidi.
Many have been rescued from al-Hol, the notorious camp 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.
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