A Yazidi woman and two children who spent 10 years captured by the Islamic State (ISIS) have been rescued at al-Hol (al-Hawl) camp in northern Syria, the Internal Security Forces of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) have reported.
Azize Khalid Ali and two children, one of whom is her daughter, were rescued after a successful operation by the security forces on 3 June.
“Our anti-crime forces obtained definite information about a kidnapped Yazidi woman in Section Four of al-Hol camp. With this, our forces conducted the necessary research and follow-up activities and arrested him,” the Internal Security Forces, or Asayish, said.
The woman and children were captured by ISIS in 2014, during the attack on Sinjar (Şengal). It was revealed that the 10-year-old girl found with the woman and her daughter, Khunav Nayef Khidir, was only a few months old when she was kidnapped after being separated from her own mother, who was killed during the Sinjar attack.
The rescued civilians will be handed over to Sinjar Home, an organisation helping Yazidis return to their ancestral land after the ISIS atrocities.
The AANES and its Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been engaged in ongoing operations in al-Hol camp to neutralise the threat of ISIS. In February, the SDF officially declared the completion of Operation Humanity and Security 3 in the camp, which began on 27 January with the support of the Global Coalition Forces, aimed at dismantling ISIS cells attempting to reorganise within the camp.
The SDF stated that the comprehensive operation resulted in the capture of 85 ISIS operatives and collaborators, along with the confiscation of a significant cache of weapons, ammunition, and explosives.
Located near the Iraqi-Syrian border, al-Hol camp is home to more than 50,000 residents, mostly women and children, many of them relatives of captured ISIS fighters. The camp’s dire conditions, coupled with the significant ISIS presence, have made it a breeding ground for extremist ideologies.
In a similar operation in February, the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), together with security forces from the Kurdish-led AANES, successfully liberated Kovan Aidi Khourto, a Yazidi woman, from 10 years of captivity under ISIS in the al-Hol camp.
Thousands of Yazidi girls and women abducted by ISIS during the Sinjar massacre on 3 August 2014, which targeted the Yazidi religious minority. Many were subsequently sold on slave markets in Syria and Iraq. Kurdish forces, particularly after the defeat of ISIS in al-Baghouz in 2019, have been actively working to free Yazidi women from ISIS captivity.
