Yazidi women gather to commemorate thousands of girls and women killed by ISIS in the so-called caliphate

Worshippers lit candles and at the ceremony to remember the victims of murder, rape and sexual violence

At Lilash Temple in Shikhan north of Iraq during International Women Day the deaths were commemorated

Dozens of Yazidi women have gathered to commemorate the thousands of girls and women who were killed by ISIS under the so-called caliphate.

The worshippers lit candles and attended a ceremony to remember the victims of murder, rape and sexual violence at the hands of the militants.

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ISIS overran the Yazidi faith's heartland of Sinjar in northern Iraq in 2014, forcing young women into servitude as 'wives' for its fighters and massacring men and older women.

The Yazidis are a religious sect whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions.

Islamic State considers them devil worshippers and its attacks on the group were condemned as a 'genocide' by the United Nations.

The ceremony at Lilash Temple in Shikhan in the north of Iraq today during International Women Day was to commemorate the deaths of women killed by the fanatics.

Yazidi women attend a ceremony at Lilash Temple to commemorate the deaths of women who were killed by ISIS militants

A Yazidi woman lighting a candle during the ceremony to mark International Women Day, in Shikhan north of Iraq

In 2014, ISIS swept across northern Iraq, killing men of different faiths and capturing the women to keep as sex slaves

A month ago the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launched what it called a 'final battle' to take the cluster of houses and farmland, and people leaving in the enclave of Baghouz near the Iraqi border have described harrowing conditions of peril and hardship.

A Yazidi woman who emerged on Thursday spoke of years of enslavement and abuse by the jihadists.

Salwa Sayed al-Omar spent years as a Yazidi prisoner of ISIS but she escaped its clutches this week, fleeing its last populated enclave in east Syria along with two Iraqi boys pretending to be her brothers.

Describing how jihadists bought and sold their Yazidi captives or passed them around as sexual slaves, Omar said: 'They took women, abused them and killed them.

'A woman was shifted from one man to another unless it was to one who had a bit of mercy... if she was in good condition, she would carry on. If not, she would get married to avoid being abused.'

Omar was eventually married to a jihadist from Tajikistan.

As the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) besieged the enclave at Baghouz, some surviving Yazidi women and children emerged among many thousands of others fleeing deprivation and bombardment, including the militant group's own unrepentant supporters.

Thousands of Yazidi women were forced into sex slavery by their ISIS 'husbands' when their homeland was overrun by militants in 2014

International Women's Day saw dozens of Yazidi women remember the brutal deaths suffered by their people. Jihadis decapitated dozens of Yazidi women and dumped the heads in dustbins, according to British SAS troops who entered recapture ISIS territory

Islamic State considers the Yazidi as devil worshippers and its attacks on the group were condemned as a 'genocide' by the United Nations

The SDF is waiting to evacuate all civilians from the Baghouz enclave before forcing the remaining jihadists there to surrender or storming the tiny area by force.

Omar escaped along with two Iraqi children, Mustafa and Dia, who had been her neighbours for two years as their respective households moved through Syria together during Islamic State's long retreat to Baghouz.

As Islamic State's many enemies advanced against it, the group would move its captives from place to place. 'They were hiding us in different places so we couldn't be seen or helped', Omar said.

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Their Islamic State captors were 'rigorous' in checking who left, said the teenage boys, Mustafa and Dia, who said they had stayed longer in the enclave to help Omar leave.

After a month of siege in the tiny pocket at Baghouz, a cluster of hamlets and farmland on the banks of the Euphrates at the Iraqi border, they were reduced to eating grass and hiding in holes when there was fighting, they said.

They all managed to get away from her 'husband' by paying him money. Many Islamic State fighters remained in Baghouz as they left on Thursday, dug into tunnels under the area, the boys said.

Speaking in the desert outside Baghouz, where people who had left the enclave were searched, questioned and sorted between civilians and fighters, Omar spoke of how she had been captured.

One Yazidi sex slave changed 'owners' 17 times as she was raped and abused by ISIS thugs who was forced her to eat grass before she fled from Baghouz

International airstrikes had killed some Yazidis living as slaves in the caliphate and there are thought to still be 1,000 Yazidis inside Baghouz, including 130 boys training to become jihadis

'They took me from Iraq. They captured us on the road and said 'we won't do anything bad to you, but you must convert to Islam'. We were afraid to be killed so we converted,' she said.

It did not save them. After months of capture, the women were split from the men, whom she never saw again. Captured boys aged seven-15 were taken to be brainwashed and trained as ISIS fighters, she said.

She was taken to Raqqa, the group's Syrian 'capital', which fell to the SDF during Islamic State's year of big defeats in 2017, and then down the Euphrates to Baghouz.

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'Today I reached the democratic forces and they said 'we will let you go out of the Islamic State'... and thank God, they helped me and let me out,' she said.

Kurdish fighters will resume their assault on ISIS's last, small patch of ground in eastern Syria if no more civilians come out by Saturday afternoon, one of their spokesmen said today.

The SDF have slowed their offensive on the jihadist enclave at Baghouz near the Iraqi border to allow many thousands of people to pour out in an exodus that has lasted weeks.

The SDF said a week ago that it believed all civilians had come out and renewed its assault, leading to a new surge of displacement, including obdurate disciples of Islamic State, some of its captives and hundreds of surrendering fighters.

An estimated 3,000 Yazidis are still unaccounted for in the besieged ISIS stronghold of Baghouz. Close to 200,000 members of the minority fled their homes when ISIS swept into their heartland over four years ago

One tortured Yazidi, Baseh Hammo (not pictured), was sold 17 times to different ISIS husbands. One of her owners, a Swede, would lock her in the home for days without food while he went to fight. Another man, an Albanian, stomped on her hands in his military boots, after she scolded him for buying a nine-year-old slave girl

However, the head of the SDF media centre, Mustafa Bali, said no more people had emerged on Friday.

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'We are waiting for tomorrow morning or perhaps until the afternoon, we'll give another space, for the possibility that civilians are present and the chance to get them out,' he said.

After that, 'if no civilian or terrorist comes out, we will launch our military operation anew.'

The capture of Baghouz will mark the end of Islamic State's territorial rule over populated areas of Iraq and Syria, and the culmination of a U.S.-backed military campaign waged by the SDF for four years.

After suddenly seizing swathes of land straddling the Iraqi-Syrian border in 2014 and declaring it their caliphate, Islamic State were beaten back by numerous local and foreign forces in both countries, suffering major defeats in 2017.

However, the jihadists remain a menace. In Iraq they have gone to ground, staging waves of killings and kidnappings.

In Syria, their comrades hold out in remote desert areas and have carried out bombings in areas controlled by the SDF.

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Those who have fled Baghouz have mostly gone to al-Hol, a displacement camp in northeast Syria whose population has swelled to 62,000 people, 90 percent of them women and children.