WUNRN
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/08/world/isis-yazidis-released/
Website Link Includes Video.
ISIS Releases More than 200 Iraq Yazidis, Mostly Women & Children
Over 200 Yazidi captives were released by ISIS in Iraq's Kirkuk province.
By
Raja Razek and Jason Hanna, CNN – April 8, 2015
(CNN)ISIS on
Wednesday released more than 200 Yazidis, a minority group whose members were
killed, captured and displaced when the Islamist terror organization overtook
their towns in northern Iraq last summer, officials said.
Most
of those released were women and children; the rest were ill or elderly, said
Rassol Omar, a commander in the Peshmerga force that defends northern Iraq's
semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
Omar
didn't say what led to the release, other than asserting that Arab tribal
leaders helped to coordinate it.
The
freed Yazidis were received by Peshmerga, who sent them to the Kurdish regional
capital, Irbil, said Nuri Osman, an official with Iraq's Kurdistan Regional
Government. It wasn't immediately clear what motivated Wednesday's release,
Osman said.
Osman
said 217 Yazidis were released. Omar, the Peshmerga commander, had a higher
count: 228.
SIS previously
released scores of other Yazidis -- largely children and the
elderly -- since attacking the group's towns last year.
The
Sunni Islamist militant group steamrolled into Iraq's north last summer,
forcing hundreds of thousands of minorities -- Yazidis among them -- from their
homes.
Yazidis
are of Kurdish descent, and their religion is considered a pre-Islamic sect
that draws from Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism.
One
of the oldest religious communities in the world, the Yazidis have long
suffered persecution, with many Muslims referring to them as devil worshipers.
ISIS' cruelty to them has been extraordinary.
ISIS'
conquest of the town of Sinjar, in particular, provoked a major humanitarian
crisis as some Yazidis fled into the mountains -- where many became trapped for
a time without food and water -- and others fled by foot into neighboring
Syria.
ISIS
slaughtered Yazidis by the hundreds, Yian Dakhil, the only lawmaker
representing the Yazidis in Iraq's Parliament, told CNN last year.
Reports
emerged from some Yazidi survivors that ISIS raped and
enslaved female Yazidi captives.
An
international coalition responded, first by airdropping supplies in the
mountains. Rescues came next. And then, starting in August, the United States
and other nations conducted airstrikes targeting ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
The
U.S. State Department estimates that 500,000 Yazidis live in northern Iraq,
accounting for less than 1% of the country's population.