MOSUL, Iraq — Three Yezidi girls in Mosul, among the some 3,000 Yezidis still believed to remain in ISIS captivity, have been freed during an operations in the western and eastern halves of the city.
An 11-year-old was freed during an operation by Iraqi security forces on Thursday in the west Mosul neighbourhood of Tanek, Lt. General Shakir Jawdat, commander of Iraq's Federal Police, said in a statement released on Friday.
Iraqi federal police then released a video showing the girl from the village of Kocho, where Nadia Murad the former ISIS captive and UN Goodwill Ambassador was also from, wearing colorful red and purple checkered dress with light green scarf standing in a police station south of Mosul.
The girl appears to be overwhelmed as she is brought to the head of the table to a microphone, then shyly turns away, as the Iraqi officers attempt to comfort her.
She was first sent to a special court in Hammam al-Alil, south of Mosul to provide her shelter. But the police then released a video showing the girl reuniting with her cousin.
The cousin says that she was under ISIS captivity for about three years.
Vian Dakhil, a prominent Yazidi lawmaker in the Iraqi parliament told AFP news agency that the girl's release had been carefully planned.
"When Daesh [ISIS] took her village on August 15, 2014, she was eight years old and she was kidnapped with her mother and her sisters," AFP quoted Dakhil as saying. "She was initially taken to Tal Afar and was sold on to Mosul."
"She has two sisters who were sold and sent to Raqqa. They are still there,” said Dakhil, adding that the girl and her family are originally from the village of Kosho in the Shingal region.
Two more Yezidi girls are said to have been freed east of the city, one by American forces, a Kurdish official told Rudaw.
Hussein Koro, the head of the Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) Yezidi Women Rescue Office told Rudaw that two more Yezidi girls were also freed in eastern Mosul and that they were waiting for them to be reunited with their families.
Koro said Thursday that American forces set free one of the girls, while the Iraqi forces set free the second girl.
The US-led coalition had no immediate statement on the issue.
Kurdish security officials have announced the safe returns of Yezidis both in Iraq and Syria.
“At around 10:30 on Saturday night [April 8], five Yezidi children and four women were rescued,” said Hussein Qaedi of the KRG’s department for Yezidi rescues office in Duhok, adding that the survivors had been held captive by ISIS militants in Raqqa.
Qaedi did not say who rescued the escapees.
“We had been working hard for 10 days. The nine Yezidi children and women were in Raqqah. And now they are sheltered in a safe place,” he said.
Saeid Hussein, a commander of the YPJ, the women’s wing of the Kurdish YPG force that controls Syria’s Kurdish regions, announced it had swapped one female ISIS member for 50 Yezidi women on April 11.
“We arrested two ISIS members; one of them was a woman. We exchanged this woman for 50 Yezidi women,” he said.
As of March, around 3,000 Yezidi women and girls remain accounted for — many believed to be enslaved by ISIS — while 2,936 Yezidis have been rescued since August 2014, according to the KRG’s Department for Yezidi Rescues Office in Duhok.
A 2015 report by the Kurdistan Region Government’s (KRG) Ministry of Martyrs and Anfal Victims found that at least 1,800 Yezidis have been killed with more than 600 children and elderly people having died in the mountains while fleeing ISIS.
At least 400 people were murdered in Kocho, according to eyewitnesses who have spoken to rights groups.
"They who kidnap these children are monsters," Major General Jaafar al-Baatat, Jawdat's top aide, said in a video statement.
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