CHARLES DE GAULLE: Twenty-seven Yazidi women arrived in France with their children on Wednesday from Iraq, fulfilling President Emmanuel Macron's pledge to take in 100 families from the ethnic group who were victims of assault by Daesh fighters.
The families were greeted at Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris by Eric Chevallier, head of the foreign ministry's crisis management division, according to AFP reporters at the scene.
"Your children are going to go to school, you're going to make friends," Chevallier said, after they arrived from Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Many of the children were still quite young, but others were adolescents, some dressed up in suits and ties for the occasion.
"What we've lived through these past five years is unimaginable. Today France is opening its arms to us, we can only be grateful," 30-year-old mother Turko told AFP.
"The first thing we would like to do is learn the language, send our children to school and learn French culture. Afterward our children will decide what they want to do with their lives."
The government is not releasing the names of the families, as they were long persecuted by Daesh fighters and many still fear for their lives.
Some were held in sexual slavery and struggled to regain a place in Yazidi society, others had to flee their homes as men died while trying to resist the IS advance.
"They have high expectations," said Giovanni Cassani, head of the International Organization for Migration in Erbil, who accompanied the women on their flight.
"On the one hand it was difficult to leave their country of origin, their family, their village, but there is also the excitement of starting a new life in a new country, with plenty of possibilities," he said.
The families were put on buses to be taken to different regions of France, officials said.
With the 27 women who arrived Wednesday, the foreign ministry said France had taken in 102 Yazidi families since last December.
Macron pledged in October 2018 to bring to France 100 Yazidi women who were targeted for sexual assault in northern Iraq beginning in 2014.
The offer came following a meeting in Paris with Nadia Murad after she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her campaign to end sexual violence as a weapon of war.
Murad was one of thousands of Yazidi women captured by extremists before they were driven out of Sinjar and other parts of Iraq, starting with campaigns by Kurdish forces backed by US-led coalition forces.
France takes in 27 more Yazidi women victims of Daesh
France takes in 27 more Yazidi women victims of Daesh
- The families were greeted at Charles de Gaulle airport
Nepal’s rapper-turned-politician takes early lead in key polls
- The polls are one of the most hotly contested elections in the Himalayan republic of 30 million people since the end of a civil war in 2006
Nepal’s centrist party of rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah took an early lead in the high-stakes parliamentary election on Friday, as slow counting continued after the first polls since last year’s deadly uprising.
But despite Shah’s party loyalists dancing on the streets of Katmandu in celebration — the numbers of votes counted remain too low to be confident that it will translate into concrete wins.
By Friday afternoon, 24 hours after polls closed, early trends issued by the Election Commission put Shah’s Rastriya Swatantra Party ahead.
HIGHLIGHT
Alongside Shah, key figures vying for power include Marxist leader KP Sharma Oli, four-time prime minister who was ousted by the September 2025 anti-corruption protests, and the newly elected leader of the Nepali Congress party, Gagan Thapa.
Alongside Shah, key figures vying for power include Marxist leader KP Sharma Oli, four-time prime minister who was ousted by the September 2025 anti-corruption protests, and the newly elected leader of the Nepali Congress party, Gagan Thapa.
At 5:00 p.m. (1115 GMT), RSP was leading in more than half of the 165 constituencies.
But there were only two declared results, and RSP had been confirmed only in one, the same as Nepali Congress.
Prakash Nyupane, a spokesman for the Election Commission, said that counting was ongoing “in a peaceful manner” across the Himalayan nation, from snowbound high-altitude mountain regions to the hot plains bordering India.
Voters have chosen who replaces the interim government in place since the September 2025 uprising, in which at least 77 people were killed, and parliament and scores of government buildings were torched.
Youth-led protests under a loose Gen Z banner began as a demonstration against a brief social media ban, but were fed by wider grievances at corruption and a woeful economy.
Kunda Dixit, publisher of the weekly Nepali Times, told AFP that if trends did reflect final wins, the political shift was dramatic.
“This is even a bigger upset than we expected — it underscores the level of public disenchantment with the old parties for under-performance, as well as anger over the events of September,” he said.
‘Fate of the country’
The polls are one of the most hotly contested elections in the Himalayan republic of 30 million people since the end of a civil war in 2006.
All eyes are watching the results in the key head-to-head battleground constituency of Jhapa-5, a usually sleepy eastern district, where 35-year-old Shah challenged directly the veteran Oli, aged 74.
Shah, better known as Balen, snappily dressed in a black suit and sunglasses, has cast himself as a symbol of youth-driven political change.
At 5 p.m. local time, at 10 percent of the votes counted in Jhapa-5, Shah was ahead by nearly five times as many votes as Oli.
Soldiers with armored trucks manned barbed wire barricades around the counting center in Jhapa.
“I hope this result changes the fate of the country for the better,” Bhagawati Adhikari, 38, told AFP, who was among a crowd of dozens at Jhapa gathered outside the security cordon.
“The country should be peaceful and secure, youth should get opportunities, corruption should stop — that’s my appeal.”
’Rest peacefully’
More than 3,400 candidates ran for 165 seats in direct elections to the 275-member House of Representatives, the lower chamber of parliament, with 110 more chosen via party lists. Turnout was 59 percent.
Full nationwide tallies could take several days.
Dixit raised the possibility that Shah’s RSP could stage a dramatic win.
“If RSP hits the magic 138 seats, Balen will become prime minister — and hopefully a cabinet of technocrats,” added Dixit.
Sushila Karki, the interim prime minister, praised the peaceful conduct of a vote she has said was critical in “determining our future.”
Karki, a 73-year-old former chief justice who reluctantly left retirement to lead the nation, now faces the challenge of managing the reaction to results.
The election saw a wave of younger candidates promising to tackle Nepal’s dismal economy, challenging veteran politicians who have dominated for decades and argue that their experience guarantees stability and security.
In Jhapa, 68-year-old shopkeeper Ved Prasad Mainali sat listening to a radio.
