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Iraq

Iraq: A Year After ISIS Rampage, Yazidis Return to a Devastated World

EMILY FELDMAN

LALISH, Iraq — One year ago, ISIS militants turned their savagery on the Yazidis, a religious minority that has lived and worshiped in the mountains of northern Iraq since at least the 12th century. The radicals, on a rampage through the region, stormed Yazidi villages executing and abducting thousands, in what was described as an attempted genocide.

Before the world fully grasped what was happening, the bodies of local men were dumped in mass graves while their wives and daughters were sold into sexual slavery.

Many of the estimated 5,000 Yazidis captured last August have since managed harrowing escapes. But the world they are returning to is unrecognizable.

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