yazidis

World News

In 'Escaping ISIS,' An Underground Railroad Forms To Save Yazidi Women

6:58pm July 15, 2015

A new Frontline documentary explores what life is like for the girls and women who have been enslaved by Islamic State militants, and also tells the story of those fighting to free them.

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An Iraqi man inspects the remains of what are believed to be members of the Yazidi minority, in the northern village of Sinuni on Feb. 3.

World News

In A Somber Homecoming, Yazidis Grieve And Watch Over Their Dead

3:22pm February 20, 2015

by Ari Shapiro

With the Islamic State pushed back, Iraq's Yazidis are returning to their villages — and to mass graves. Now, they guard the remains and are calling on the U.N. to document the killings.

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Before ISIS attacked it, the northern Iraqi town of Snuny had a population of nearly 150,000 — a mix of Kurdish Muslims and Yazidis, who belong to a religious ethnic minority in this region. Only about 10,000 have returned after Kurdish fighters reclaim

World News

ISIS May Be Gone, But Life Has Yet To Return To Normal In Northern Iraq

12:49pm February 15, 2015

by Ari Shapiro

The remote town of Snuny was recently liberated from ISIS. But aside from Kurdish and Yazidi militia men, very few people have ventured back. There are no services, and the ISIS threat is still real.

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The temple of Sharfadin in Northern Iraq is 800 years old, and followers of the Yazidi religion consider it one of the most sacred sites in the world. Though ISIS tried to destroy it, a small group of Yazidi fighters kept the shrine standing.

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Outmanned And Outgunned, Fighters Defend Yazidi Shrine Against ISIS

9:08pm February 13, 2015

by Ari Shapiro

Led by a celebrated Yazidi fighter, a small band of Kurdish peshmerga survived a months-long ISIS onslaught. Unlike others in Syria and Iraq, this sacred place still stands, nearly unscathed.

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A mentally disabled Yazidi man is carried to a bus that will bring him to the Kurdish city of Dohuk, after being released by Islamic militants, in Alton Kupri, outside Kirkuk, Iraq, on Sunday.

ISIS Frees 200 Elderly Yazidis; Reportedly 'Too Expensive To Feed'

9:07am January 18, 2015

by Scott Neuman

The mostly infirm refugees from the religious minority were released by the self-declared Islamic State. Speculation is that they had become a burden to the militants.

Many Yazidis, like the ones shown here, managed to flee the onslaught of the so-called Islamic State and made their way to relative safety, like this camp near the northern Iraqi border crossing of Zakho. However, some 5,000 Yazidis, many of them women, a

World News

For Yazidi Women, Escaping ISIS Doesn't Mean The Ordeal Is Over

9:38am December 11, 2014

by Leila Fadel

Many of the 5,000 Yazidi hostages in Iraq are women who are being raped. Those who return to their deeply conservative community face new trauma: shame, invasive "virginity tests," possible pregnancy.

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Iraqi Yazidi women who fled the violence in the northern Iraq take shelter in the city of Dohuk on Aug. 5. The Yazidis, are a small community that follows an ancient faith and have been repeatedly targeted by jihadists. Yazidi leaders say several thousand

World News

Iraq's Yazidis Appeal For Help In Finding Their Missing Women

6:32pm November 04, 2014

by Michele Kelemen

U.S. airstrikes helped save thousands from the Yazidi community in northern Iraq in August. But the group says the Islamic State has seized many Yazidi women and is selling them as sex slaves.

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World News

Yazidi Community In America Watches Events In Iraq With Horror

6:24pm August 17, 2014

by NPR Staff

Lincoln, Neb., is home to a sizable group of Iraqi Yazidis, members of the minority group being persecuted in Iraq. One of them, Sulaiman Murad, describes the agony of watching the crisis from afar.

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