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‘We usually cry when we watch the news’: anguish of Iraq’s Yazidi families

When Laila learnt Islamic State was holding her son in an old school less than 100 miles from the refugee camp she now calls home, she could start to dream of a rescue attempt. Then, when she heard troops were advancing on the group’s last stronghold in Iraq, she even allowed herself to believe they […]

Emma Graham-Harrison and Fazel Hawramy write for The Guardian:

When Laila learnt Islamic State was holding her son in an old school less than 100 miles from the refugee camp she now calls home, she could start to dream of a rescue attempt. Then, when she heard troops were advancing on the group’s last stronghold in Iraq, she even allowed herself to believe they might liberate her boy.

Days later the advance has slowed, there has been no mention of Yazidi captives by soldiers or politicians, and her despair has returned. “Hope is crushed,” she said. “Ever since we lost our kids, no one has done anything, planned anything to rescue them.”

While the fight for Mosul is a key step towards dismantling Isis’s self-declared caliphate, for a group that has endured some of its most extreme brutality and violence, it only poses new dangers. Relatives say the liberating forces have forgotten hundreds of Yazidi women and children held by Isis as slaves in Mosul and are calling for attacking forces to add rescue missions – or at least details of where captives are held – to their battle plan. “We know there are more than 1,000 Yazidi captives – women, girls and boys – in Mosul,” said Ameena Saeed Hasan, a Yazidi activist recently awarded the 2016 Human Rights First award for her work running a rescue network.