A Year After ISIL Attack, Yazidis ‘Will Never Forget’

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As the sun sank below the mountains of northern Iraq, 25-year-old Noora recounted fleeing Sinjar with her family last August as fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) advanced.

Noora, who spoke under a pseudonym and now lives in the Shreya refugee camp in northern Iraq, witnessed ISIL fighters massacre Yazidi men and saw her brothers taken captive before her eyes, she told Al Jazeera. Then the fighters captured her and took her to Badush prison near Mosul, where she said approximately 4,000 other Yazidi girls were held.

“Everyone who fled that day saw someone killed or had someone close to them taken,” Noora said. “We will never forget. It will be in our memories until the day we die. No Yazidi can ever forget this day.”

In the UN-issued tent she shares with her extended family, Noora nodded towards her infant niece, with whom she escaped ISIL territory in May. “Not even the children will forget,” she said.

Aljazeera.