QAZLAJOKH, Syria: Syrian Kurds on Saturday repatriated 25 women and children from Iraq’s Yazidi minority after freeing them during the final push against Daesh, a local official said.
The US-backed fighters say they rescued some 300 Yazidi women and children during the fight to take the militants’ last scrap of territory in eastern Syria.
“Today, we will hand over 25 people — 10 women and 15 children — to the Yazidi council in Sinjar,” said Ziyad Rustam, an official with the Kurdish-run group Yazidi House, which reunites rescued Yazidi children with surviving relatives.
“They will be sent to their families,” he told AFP.
At the Yazidi House headquarters in a village near the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli, women wearing colorful robes collected children scampering around the compound before boarding busses bound for Sinjar, the Yazidi heartland in Iraq.
“The fate of my three sisters remains unknown... I don’t know anything about them,” said 17-year-old Jamila Haidar.
“I hope we will be reunited soon.”
Iraq’s Yazidis are a symbol of the suffering caused by Daesh during its rein over vast swathes of Syria and Iraq.
The militants stormed through Iraq’s northwest in 2014 slaughtering thousands of men and boys and abducting women and girls to be abused as sex slaves.
But they have since lost all of the once-sprawling cross-border “caliphate” to multiple offensive.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces last month announced the defeat of the Daesh proto-state after tens of thousands of people streamed out of the militants’ last patch of territory, around the village of Baghouz near the Iraqi border.
Rustam said SDF had in total liberated 850 Yazidi women and children during its battles against Daesh since 2015.
But 3,040 Yazidis are still missing, he said, adding that the search for them was ongoing.
Rustam said the militants had “sold many of them to people inside Syria, in places like Idlib,” most of which is held by a former Al-Qaeda affiliate.
Some of the Yazidis extracted from Daesh’s last sliver of territory are being held at the Kurdish-run Al-Hol camp, which also houses militant family members.
Syria Kurds return 25 Yazidis freed from IS to Iraq
Syria Kurds return 25 Yazidis freed from IS to Iraq
US plans meeting for Gaza ‘Board of Peace’ in Washington on Feb 19, Axios reports
- The Axios report cited a US official and diplomats from four countries that are on the board
- The plans for the meeting, which would also be a fundraising conference for Gaza reconstruction, are in early stages and could still change, Axios reported
WASHINGTON: The White House is planning the first leaders meeting for President Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace” in relation to Gaza on February 19, Axios reported on Friday, citing a US official and diplomats from four countries that are on the board.
The plans for the meeting, which would also be a fundraising conference for Gaza reconstruction, are in early stages and could still change, Axios reported.
The meeting is planned to be held at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, the report added, noting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet Trump at the White House on February 18, a day before the planned meeting.
The White House and the US State Department did not respond to requests for comment.
In late January, Trump launched the board that he will chair and which he says will aim to resolve global conflicts, leading to many experts being concerned that such a board could undermine the United Nations.
Governments around the world have reacted cautiously to Trump’s invitation to join that initiative. While some of Washington’s Middle Eastern allies have joined, many of its traditional Western allies have thus far stayed away.
A UN Security Council resolution, adopted in mid-November, authorized the board and countries working with it to establish an international stabilization force in Gaza, where a fragile ceasefire began in October under a Trump plan on which Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas signed off.
Under Trump’s Gaza plan revealed late last year, the board was meant to supervise Gaza’s temporary governance. Trump thereafter said it would be expanded to tackle global conflicts.
Many rights experts say that Trump overseeing a board to supervise a foreign territory’s affairs resembled a colonial structure and have criticized the board for not including a Palestinian.The fragile ceasefire in Gaza has been repeatedly violated, with over 550 Palestinians and four Israeli soldiers reported killed since the truce began in October. Israel’s assault on Gaza since late 2023 has killed over 71,000 Palestinians, caused a hunger crisis and internally displaced
Gaza’s entire population.
Multiple rights experts, scholars and a UN inquiry say it amounts to genocide. Israel calls its actions self-defense after Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and took over 250 hostages in a late 2023 attack.
