Yazidis rebuild destroyed shrine in Iraqi city

Workers rebuild a Yazidi shrine, after is was destroyed by Daesh in Bashiqa, a town near Mosul, Iraq August 8, 2017. (REUTERS)

BASHIQA: Yazidi men and boys in the town of Bashiqa north east of Mosul are rebuilding a shrine destroyed by Daesh as they wait for the return of women from their community taken captive years ago by the terrorists.
They are hoping to celebrate their first festival for three years in the Malak Miran shrine next month but the big celebration will happen after the release of Yazidi women, taken by Daesh when it overran the plain of Nineveh in 2014.
More than 3,000 Yazidis, mostly from Sinjar to the west of Bashiqa, were killed — with more than half shot, beheaded or burnt alive — and about 6,800 taken for sex slaves or fighters.
Daesh fighters are now reportedly selling captive women and girls before they make their escape from their beseigned Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, according to the UN.
“The real festival will come when all our captives are freed,” said shrine’s supervisor Shaker Haidar Al-Mujewar.
Volunteers come every day to help with the rebuilding and they gather from time to time in the unfinished shrine.
Residents and other Yazidi families are funding the reconstruction, Mujewar said.
Yazidis in Bashiqa were able to escape before Daesh seized the town and the militants were driven out in November 2016, about a month after the start of the offensive to retake Mosul, the northern city used by the militants as their capital.
Many of Bashiqa’s families are still living in camps.