Early Saturday morning, the multi-ethnic Kurdish majority SDF forces carried out a special operation in a Deir ez Zor suburb, rescuing five children and three women from ISIS captivity as reported by Hawar News Agency.
Once the Yezidi family was brought to safety within liberated areas, they told Hawar that there were several families, mostly children and women, who still remained under ISIS control.
When ISIS militants brutally marched into Shingal and its surroundings in August 2014, they arrested thousands of Yezidis. Some of them were collectively killed in the region, other girls and women were taken and later sold as sex slaves by ISIS members.
According to official reports released by YAZDA, a Yezidi rights group in September, nearly 7,000 Yezidi men, women and children were abducted in the first days of ISIS’ attack on Shingal in August 2014.
The reports stated that as many as 1,636 women and girls and 1,173 men and boys still remain unaccounted for.
ISIS has suffered a series of defeats in Deir ez-Zor, including the loss of their de facto capital of Raqqa, although fighting still continues to retake al-Boukamal, the last Syrian city the militant group controls.
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