SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iraqi parliament’s deputy speaker Hassan Kaabi called on the federal government to open an office in Sinjar to rescue Yazidis kidnapped by Islamic State (ISIS) militants.
Kaabi attended a ceremony to pay respects to Yazidi women rescued from ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria, his office said in a statement.
The deputy speaker said there were an agreement among lawmakers in the Iraqi Council of Representatives to adopt two laws specific to Yazidis.
“One of them is the law of mass graves and the second is related to Yazidi girls and women who were rescued from ISIS,” Kaabi noted.
Kaabi also called for the uncovering of Yazidi mass graves and called on the federal government to open an office in Sinjar to look for and rescue Yazidis who were abducted by ISIS militants.
Islamic State overran the Yazidi faith’s heartland of Sinjar in the Kurdistan Region in 2014, forcing young women into servitude as “wives” for its fighters and massacring men and older women.
The militants shot, beheaded, burned alive or kidnapped more than 9,000 members of the minority religion, in what the United Nations has called a genocidal campaign against them. According to community leaders, more than 3,000 Yazidis remain unaccounted for.
