MoD: IS prison for Yazidi women captives found in Mosul

Mosul (IraqiNews.com) Iraq’s Ministry of Defense said Sunday that army forces had run into a prison in Mosul where Islamic State militants had used lock up women from the Yazidi religious minority.

The prison was found at the 17 Tamuz (July 17th) district in western Mosul, one of the districts which Iraqi forces have recaptured from the militants since it launched an offensive in February to retake the western side of the city.

Iraqi forces are currently besieging IS members in western Mosul’s Old City, the place from where the group first declared the establishment of an Islamist “caliphate” in 2014. Troops have discovered several mass graves of Iraqi citizens and security members, as well as prison facilities where IS has tortured on locked up Iraqis from all ethnicities and religious identities.

Many Yazidis, whose beliefs combine elements of several Middle Eastern religions, were persecuted and held in Mosul by Islamic State, which considered them devil-worshippers.

At least 9,900 of Iraq’s Yazidis were killed or kidnapped in just days in an Islamic State attack in 2014, according to a rare study that documented the number of Yazidis affected.

About 3,100 Yazidis were killed – with more than half shot, beheaded or burned alive – and about 6,800 kidnapped to become sex slaves or fighters, according to the report published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine.

Popular Mobilization Units, the paramilitary force fighting IS alongside the government, said a few weeks ago they had liberated Yazidi habitats west of Mosul.