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Nofa Zaghla thought her son was dead. The Yazidi refugee from northern Iraq, now living in Winnipeg with her four youngest children, was separated from the boy, Emad Mishko Tamo, in August 2014, after the family was captured by ISIL.

She assumed the worst.

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Then, a few days ago, she got a call from her brother-in-law in Iraq. Emad was alive, she learned. Rescued by the Iraqi army and pictured — on social media — in the passenger seat of a pick-up truck, clutching a bottle of water, looking frail and mud-caked and wide-eyed and blood-encrusted but alive, nonetheless.

“We didn’t think we would ever see him again,” Zaghla told the CBC through a translator. “I was very saddened (by his condition) when I saw his photo … I spoke to him on the phone and he said, ‘I’m OK, I’m going to be fine.’”

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The 12-year-old is now in a refugee camp with an uncle. Zaghla’s hope is that the Canadian government will step in and hasten a reunion in Manitoba. The Yazidi Association of Manitoba is acting on her behalf. The organization has gone public with Emad’s story, in the hopes of spurring federal officials to act quickly to bring the boy to Canada.