‘I was raped everyday’: Yazidi girl speaks of horrors of being held as ISIS sex slave

‘How am I telling you this without crying? I tell you I ran out of tears’

A Yazidi girl has spoken of the horrors she suffered at the hands of Isis after being held captive as a sex slave.

Ekhlas was just 14 when extremist fighters targeted her community in northern Iraq.

She was kidnapped along with thousands of other Yazidi women and children when Isis swept across Iraq in a brutal campaign in August 2014.

Around 50,000 members of the long-persecuted religious and ethnic group were trapped when Isis besieged Mount Sinjar.

Ekhlas tried to escape but was captured and held as a sex slave by the group. Now she has spoken about the horrors of her ordeal that left her so hopeless she tried to kill herself in captivity.

“Everyday for six months he raped me. I tried to kill myself,” she told

“He picked me out of 150 girls by drawing lots. He was so ugly, like a beast, with his long hair. He smelt so bad, I was so frightened I couldn’t look at him.”

Ekhlas managed to escape one day while her captor was out fighting and was taken to a refugee camp.

“How am I telling you this without crying? I tell you I ran out of tears,” she said.

She now lives in Germany where she is receiving therapy and education in a psychiatric hospital and has ambitions to become a lawyer in the future.

An estimated 9,900 Yazidis were killed or captured when Isis took over Mount Sinjar in the summer of 2014.

Of that figure 3,100 were murdered, with almost half executed by gunshot, beheading or being burned alive, while the rest died from starvation, dehydration or injuries during the Isis siege on Mount Sinjar.

But the true scale of the genocide inflicted on the Yazidis may never be known as thousands remain in captivity, researchers have warned.

An estimated 6,800 other Yazidis were kidnapped in the brutal campaign, with over a third still missing at the time of the survey.

Source: Independent