Militants from the Islamic State group executed 19 Yazidi girls who refused to be sex slaves by burning them alive inside iron cages, it was reported. The victims were set ablaze in the centre of Mosul recently in front of a large crowd. “They were punished for refusing to have sex with IS militants,” media activist Abdullah al-Malla was quoted as the press. “The 19 girls were burned to death while hundreds of people were watching. Nobody could do anything to save them from the brutal punishment,” a witness said.
IS jihadis took over 3,000 Yazidi girls as sex slaves after they overran Sinjar in northwest Iraq in August 2014, causing a mass displacement of nearly 400,000 people to Duhok and Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. IS continues to hold about 1,800 abducted Yazidi women and girls in Iraq and Syria, according to Kurdistan regional government officials. During a lightening offensive in 2014, the IS captured Mosul, making it the ‘capital’ of its self-styled Caliphate, which extends across a swathe of territory in Iraq and Syria. Supported by air strikes from the US-led coalition, by Kurdish Peshmerga troops and a Shia-dominated paramilitary force, Iraqi forces recently began a long-awaited offensive to re-take Mosul from the IS.
