Please refresh the page and retry. T he Yazidi girls were far from home when the Iraqi army rescue boats picked them up, starved and confused, from the banks of the Euphrates. Unlike the hundreds of others escaping the city of Fallujah this week , Nadia and Mona were not residents. They had been captured, along with 5, other Yazidi women and children, by Islamic State militants when they overran their towns in the summer of , purging the minority they consider to be devil worshippers.
For the last two years the pair, aged 22 and 23, have been held as sex slaves; bought, sold and passed around senior Isil jihadists. With two Yazidi girls Escaped from isis in the airplane.. Back to Erbil pic. There was nowhere to swim and they were trapped on land by ISIS. They were then sold to an Isil emir living in Fallujah and crossed into Iraq. T he families of Nadia and Mona, whose real names have been concealed, had prayed they were alive somewhere and would one day find their way home.
They will then be taken on to Sinjar to reunite with their loved ones. Since , more than 2, of those kidnapped have escaped, been ransomed or rescued, but the rest remain unaccounted for. Mahlwi said they had information that between more Yazidis are still being held in Fallujah and he hopes they will be brought out alive when they liberate the city in the coming days and weeks.
I raqi forces began the operation to recapture Fallujah, one of two Iraqi centres under Isil control, early last week. Within days they managed to clear the surrounding villages, but stalled on Friday at the fringes of the city itself, slowed in their advance by concerns over the fate of trapped civilians and fierce resistance from Isil.
Inside Fallujah, which lies 40 miles west of Baghdad, civilians were under increasing pressure from worsening shortages and nervous jihadists preparing for a desperate holdout. The last-remaining fighters, thought to number around 1,, are using some 50, residents as human shields. Residents who have managed to flee told the Telegraph they were moving civilians house-to-house to protect them from the advancing army.
