US-backed Syrian fighters liberate Yazidi woman who was raped and forced to marry extremists

U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria have liberated a Yazidi woman who had been held by the Islamic State group for a decade where she was raped and forced to marry extremists

BEIRUT -- U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria have liberated a Yazidi woman who had been held for a decade by the Islamic State group, where she was raped and forced to marry extremists, the Syrian Democratic Forces said Monday.

The 24-year-old woman along with her son and daughter were rescued during an ongoing security operation by Kurdish fighters in Syria’s northeastern sprawling al-Hol camp that houses tens of thousands of people, mostly wives and children of Islamic State fighters as well as supporters of the militant group, the SDF said.

The SDF launched Operation Humanity and Security 3 at al-Hol on Friday and since then three dozen people have been detained on suspicion of links to the extremist group that once ruled large parts of Syria and Iraq.

The SDF said the Women’s Protection Units, or YPJ, liberated the Yazidi woman on Sunday saying that she is originally from Hardan village in Iraq’s Yazidi heartland of Sinjar. The statement said the woman was abducted by IS fighters during the 2014 massacres committed by the extremists during which they killed thousands of men and took many women and teenage girls who were held as sex slaves.

The woman said in a video released by the YPJ that she was staying with a family before being taken to the camp and was told not to reveal her identity or say that she is Yazidi. The woman said she used a fake name during her stay at al-Hol until she was liberated.