Islamic State trained 1,600 Yazidi children on beheading: Kurdish official
ISIS uses children in its terrorist operations against civilians. Archival photo.
Khairi Bozani, the head of the Yazidi Affairs Office of the Kurdistan Regional Government, told journalists on Saturday that “consuls of countries in Kurdistan were notified that those children could represent danger against the whole world countries at any moment. It cannot be ruled out that IS could use them in terrorist actions in European countries as well as the U.S., Arab countries or elsewhere.”
According to the latest estimate by the Directorate of Yazidi Abductees Affairs in Duhok, more than 6,417 Yazidi persons were freed from IS.
Many Yazidis were persecuted and held in Mosul by Islamic State, which considered them devil-worshippers.
A study on the number of Yazidis affected showed that at least 9,900 of Iraq’s Yazidis were killed or kidnapped in just days in an attack by the militants in 2014.
About 3,100 Yazidis were killed – with more than half shot, beheaded or burned alive – while about 6,800 others were kidnapped to become sex slaves or fighters, according to the report published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine.