ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Islamic State militants tortured and abused Kurdish children when they were held for four months near the Syrian town of Kobane, Human Rights Watch said in a report issued on Tuesday. Separately, 93 Syrian Kurds were released by ISIS on Tuesday but it was unknown why they were freed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. They were among more than 160 people who were abducted en route for Iraqi Kurdistan in February. Human Rights Watch interviewed four children, aged between 14 and 16, in Turkey to where they escaped after ISIS released them on October 29. They were part of a group of 153 Kurdish boys abducted by the group on May 29. They described being beaten with a hose and an electric cable and they were forced to watch videos of ISIS beheadings and attacks. ISIS has also seized other children and adult male and female civilians from villages near Kobane. It is apparently holding some of them hostage as a bargaining chip for the release of ISIS fighters held by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Syrian-Kurdish armed group. A combined force of Syrian fighters and Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga are currently fighting a new offensive near Kobane, which has been besieged by ISIS for seven weeks. “Since the beginning of the Syrian uprising, children have suffered the horrors of detention and torture, first by the [Syrian Bashar Al] Assad government and now by ISIS,” said Fred Abrahams, special advisor for children’s rights at Human Rights Watch. “This evidence of torture and abuse of children by ISIS underlines why no one should support their criminal enterprise.” ISIS initially stopped about 250 Kurdish students from Kobane as they travelled home after taking their middle school exams in Aleppo on May 29. ISIS released all the girls, around 100, within a few hours, but kept 153 boys at a school in Manbij, a town 55 kilometres south-west of Kobane. About 50 of the boys escaped or were released between June and September, with about 15 of them apparently being exchanged for ISIS fighters held by the YPG. In late September, ISIS released about 75 of the remaining boys, including those interviewed by Human Rights Watch. The four children did not know what prompted their release. ISIS guards at the Manbij school beat the children who tried to escape, did poorly in compulsory religious lessons, or did anything else perceived by their captors as misbehaving. ISIS gave especially bad treatment to the boys from families that had a relative in the YPG, the children said. “It was really those whose families were close to the YPG who suffered most,” said one of the boys, aged 15. “They [ISIS] told them to give them the addresses of their families, cousins, uncles, saying, ‘When we go to Kobani we will get them and cut them up.’ They saw the YPG as kafir [unbelievers].” The children said they got very occasional visits and phone calls from their parents. They were also initially forbidden from speaking Kurdish. The 15-year-old said ISIS guards used an electric cable to beat children on the hands, back, and soles of their feet, especially when they misbehaved. One child who muttered “Oh Mother” when he was caught in another group’s room was strung up, suspended with his hands tied behind his back, one foot tied to his hands, and told he should call on God, not his mother.
World19-06-2026Switzerland confirms postponement of US–Iran talks as diplomatic preparations continue
.jpeg&w=3840&q=75)
