MAQLUBA, Iraq (AP) – The young Yazidi girl rocked apprehensively as she described the ordeal that took her from her family, snatched from her home by militants in Iraq, then sold as a slave in Syria before finally escaping to Turkey.
The 15-year-old is now with what is left of her family – two of her brothers and some more distant relatives – living in a makeshift roadside shelter in this tiny village in northern Iraq, along with other families shattered by the onslaught from the Islamic State militant group.
Her two sisters remain in the militants’ hands, and her father, other brothers and other male relatives have vanished, their fates unknown.
The girl was among hundreds of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority captured by Islamic State fighters in early August when the militants overran her hometown of Sinjar in northwestern Iraq. Hundreds were killed in the attack, and tens of thousands fled for their lives, most to the Kurdish-held parts of northern Iraq.
Iraq’s Human Rights Ministry said at the time that hundreds of women were abducted by the militants, who consider the Yazidis a heretical sect.