Erbil (IraqiNews.com) Erbil (IraqiNews.com) Number of Yazidi survivors, who were kidnapped by Islamic State, has reached up to 3,191, a Kurdish official said on Thursday.

“The recent figures indicate that 6,417 Yazidis are held by IS,” Khairi Bozani, the head of the Yazidi Affairs Office of the Kurdistan Regional Government, told Alghad Press. “Number of kidnapped women reaches 3,547, while 2,870 Yazidi men are abducted.”

“Number of survivors reached 3,191, including 1,128 women and 335 men,” Bozani added. “Female children survivors reached 900, while male children reached 828.”

The Kurdish-speaking community came to the spotlight when Islamic State militants, taking over large parts of Iraq, victimized its members, committing massacres and subjecting them to forced conversions, sexual slavery and other reported atrocities.

In July, Bozani said around 90,000 Yazidi out of a total of 550,000 in Iraq have immigrated to Europe.

Many Yazidis were persecuted and held in Mosul by Islamic State, which considered them devil-worshippers.

A study on the number of Yazidis affected showed that at least 9,900 of Iraq’s Yazidis were killed or kidnapped in just days in an attack by the militants in 2014.

About 3,100 Yazidis were killed – with more than half shot, beheaded or burned alive – while about 6,800 others were kidnapped to become sex slaves or fighters, according to the report published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine.





