After 10 years of mourning, Yazidi girl returns alive
Shafaq News/ Yazidi girl reunites with family after being believed dead following ISIS attack on their village in 2014, in the Duhok province of the Kurdistan Region.
The survivor, Silvana Khader, revealed to Shafaq News the fate of her family members: "My father and older brother were killed by ISIS, and we don't know anything about the fate of my mother and younger brother. They are still missing."
A relative, Raad Ahmed, stated, "After a long search with no results, the family believed she had perished, so they dug a symbolic grave for her in the Kojo cemetery."
Silvana's return represents a beacon of hope for Yazidi survivors still searching for their loved ones, serving as a continuous reminder of the tragedies left by years of conflict and terrorism in Iraq.
Kojo, her village, was one of the most devastated Yazidi areas during ISIS’s 2014 invasion, where massacres and brutal crimes occurred, resulting in the displacement and scattering of its population and the loss of hundreds of its children.
The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking minority counting about 500,000 in Iraq, were persecuted by ISIS after the group overran large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq beginning in 2014.
On August 3, 2014, ISIS militants seized control of Sinjar. According to statistics, approximately 1,290 Yazidi civilians were murdered, and since then, more than 70 mass graves and numerous individual graves have been discovered in Sinjar.
