Yezidis in Syria demonstrated in the northeastern Syrian town of Amuda, near the Syrian-Turkish border, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the onset of Islamic State (ISIS) genocide of Yezidis in the province of Shingal, Iraq.
On August 3, 2014, Islamic State (ISIS) militias sweeping through vast swathes of Syria and Iraq took the Yezidi town of Shingal, abducting the town’s men and boys, executing them en masse, and burying them in mass graves. Women and children were subject to kidnap, sex slavery and forced conversion to Islam.
Yezidis, an ethnoreligious minority, predominantly live in Iraq, but they can also be found in Turkey, Armenia and Georgia, as well as in diaspora communities in Germany, the United States, and elsewhere.
A 2004 estimate put Syria's Yezidi population number at 15,000, though the displacement of an estimated 400,000 from neighbouring Iraq has seen that number mushroom as some sought shelter from ISIS violence in northern Syrian camps for the internally displaced.Some Yezidi wives and children of ISIS fighters in Iraq were taken to Syria. A fraction of them have been freed and returned to Shingal.
Of the 6,417 Yezidis believed to have been abducted from Shingal, 2,992 remain missing.
Photos by AFP/ Delil Souleiman