Most were living in areas too remote or were physically incapable of leaving, while a few hundred are Yazidis who escaped and then came back to combat Islamic State.Īsaf, for example, fled Sinjar in August. But while international attention has flitted away, several thousand civilians are still stranded on the mountain. They became a brief cause célèbre in America, galvanizing a U.S.-led air campaign that helped most of the Yazidis evacuate through Syria to Iraq’s Kurdistan region. More than 200,000 Yazidis fled Sinjar in August, catching the world’s attention as they hid in the mountains without food or water. There’s no way out."Īsaf was one of 2,000 fighters defending Mount Sinjar from the Islamic State - a mix of Yazidi volunteers, along with forces from the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga and the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Syria-based Kurdish militia. "We need weapons, food, vehicles - we need a road. "We are living off of figs from the mountain and leftovers from abandoned villages," Asaf tells them. His Yazidi sheikh and relatives, all displaced since August, crowd around for news of Sinjar. The grey-bearded 64-year-old lies on a hospital bed, arms limp and eyebrows furrowed.
Relatives fill each room, sitting on beds and floors around the patients: wounded soldiers, malnourished children, and people sick from living in tents pierced by rain and cold.Ībdulhalif Asaf arrived to the hospital by helicopter, the only way to leave the Sinjar Mountains, where he was shot in his stomach and thigh while fighting the Islamic State. Inside, the hallway smells like iodine and sweat. Men fill the entry area, clutching their cell phones, eyes fixed on the doors where the wounded are wheeled in and out. DOHUK, Iraq - Dohuk Hospital’s emergency ward is packed.
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