In the years that followed, the focus fell largely on the gruesome details that emerged as more and more women were able to escape their captors and share their stories. Reporters from all over the world descended on the country in turmoil, slinging laptops and cameras and donning body armour. By mid-August the catastrophe had created a media frenzy. Yezidis like these were forced to flee their villages GettyĪs the stifling summer dragged on and the United States announced its air campaign against ISIS, the first group of reporters began to appear. Countless families were shattered by the loss of a mother, a daughter, a sister. In the days that followed they killed thousands and enslaved an estimated 6,383 women and children, devastating and traumatising entire communit ies in the process.

In one swift assault, ISIS fighters armed to the teeth attacked and seized Yazidi towns and villages in Sinjar, north Iraq, where about 500,000 members of the religious minority lived. But it wasn't until the early hours of August 3, 2014, when vigilant men gripping rusty Kalashnikovs spotted unfamiliar vehicles heading towards them through the desert, that Iraq's Yazidis came face to face with their killers. Mosul had fallen in June and they knew an ISIS attack was likely. A sense of foreboding hung in the air on the eve of one of Iraq’s greatest modern tragedies – the killing, displacing and enslaving of tens of thousands of Yazidi men, women and children by Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi’s army of terror.

With Ash on Their Faces by Cathy Otten