Children of Iraq’s Islamic State rape victims in limbo
Yazidi migrants in northern Iraq.
Nineveh (IraqiNews.com) Hundreds of children born for Iraqi victims of rape by the Islamic State are facing a murky future, according to a local paramilitary commander from the religious ethnicity.
Murad Sheikh Kalu, a commander of the Yazidi mobilization force, told Almaalomah website on Tuesday that “most of Yazidi women kidnapped and raped by Islamic State extremists gave birth to babies after their release”.
“Those children are in hundreds, and are of unknown parentage, they are facing an unknown fate, which is a great danger|, Kalu said.
“While some of them are held by their mothers, others are being shifted among camps and orphanages,” he revealed.
He urged the Iraqi government to “take urgent measures to contain those children, legalize their conditions and embrace them instead of leaving them to the street,” as he put it.
Islamic State massacred and enslaved thousands of Yazidis, among other Iraqis, when they overran a third of Iraq in 2014.
According to the United Nations, thousands of Yazidi men and boys remain missing and the terrorist group continues to subject some 3,000 women and girls in Syria to violence.