Islamic State holds 400 Yezidi, Shi’ite women captive in Iraq's Tel Afar

PanARMENIAN.Net - Islamic State (IS) militants are keeping nearly 400 women captives from the Kurdish Yezidi and Shi’ite Muslim communities in Tel Afar, said a member of the Iraqi parliament, according to BasNews.

MP Nahla Hababi, a representative of Iraqi Turkmens, told BasNews on Wednesday, November 2 that the woman captives are subjected to a serious threat as the Iraqi forces are pushing deeper into IS-held areas.

“Before launching an assault to liberate the areas, counter-terrorism forces and the Hashd al-Shaabi [pro-government Shi’ite militias] need to conduct a rescue operation and bring these captives to safety,” Hababi urged.

The MP believes IS insurgents are intending to use the woman captives as human shields against coalition airstrikes. However, she said, the extremist group may execute them at any point of the operations.

Following the fall of Mosul into the hands of IS back in June 2014, the jihadists overrun the predominantly Yezidi town of Sinjar and took more than 5,000 Yezidi women and children to their slave markets in Mosul and Raqqa.

Nearly 1,800 of them have so far been rescued or they managed to escape the group. But thousands of them are yet at the hand of the jihadist group, forced into sex slavery and inhuman punishments.