Shingal – 53 enslaved Ezidis were freed on Thursday evening after 20 months in ISIS captivity. Fighters of the Kurdish People´s Protection Units (YPG) accompanied the freed captives, including 12 women and 41 children, to the Shingal mountains where they were received by Ezidi resistance fighters.
No other details are known. As in the previous days, another prisoner exchange was apparently conducted between the YPG and terrorist militia ISIS. Several high-ranking ISIS commanders who were captured during the recent and successful anti-ISIS operations launched by YPG, PKK and YBS forces, were exchanged for enslaved Ezidis. Yesterday´s freed group was supposedly held in Raqqa, the ISIS stronghold in Syria.
Salih Muslim, co-chairman of the Kurdish PYD, the political wing of the YPG, already expressed in October last year his willingness to exchange prisoners. 104 Ezidis have been thus so far rescued within only two weeks from ISIS captivity.
