Iraqi Christina Ezzo Abada, a former hostage of Islamic State militants for three years, sits next to her sister inside a cramped home at a refugee camp in Erbil, Iraq, on June 10, 2017. PHOTO: REUTERS
ishtartv.com - hstraitstimes.com
10-6-2017
ERBIL
(REUTERS) - A six-year old Iraqi Christian girl, kidnapped by Islamic State
when she was three, was reunited with her family on Friday, and getting used to
saying 'mum' and 'dad' once more. "The best day of my life is the day when
Christina came back," said her mother, Aida Nuh, on Saturday (June 10).
Dark
circles around her eyes are evidence of sleepless nights since August 2014,
when the militants snatched Christina from her, a few weeks after overrunning
the town of Qaraqosh, 15 km southeast of Mosul. "She stayed three years
with the terrorists. Of course she forgot who her mother is, who her father is,
that we are her family, but she will learn again."
Islamic
State has kidnapped thousands of men, women and children from Iraq's
minorities, mainly Yazidis.
Christians
who did not or could not escape in time were faced with an ultimatum - pay a
tax for protection, convert to Islam, or die by the sword. Some, like
Christina, were kidnapped.
Christian
families who remained in Qaraqosh were forcibly displaced on Aug 22, 2014. The
militants took away Christina from the minibus which had driven them to the
edge of Islamic State territory, after threatening Aida, who desperately
resisted.
The
family's efforts to track her though Arab friends were rewarded on Friday, when
they got a call telling them Christina had been found in Hayy al-Tanak, a poor
neighbourhood of Mosul.
Eighth
months into the US-backed offensive to take back Mosul, all of the city has
fallen to Iraqi government forces except a pocket by the western bank of the
Tigris river. "We went to a dirty place in Hayy el-Tanak.., we took the
child," said Christina's blind father, Khader Touma, wearing dark glasses
and surrounded by the family now complete with the return of his youngest
daughter.
Her
two sisters and two brothers had escaped to Kurdish territory before the
arrival of the militants. "I'm with mum and dad," said Christina,
playing with a plastic toy, in a mobile home for displaced people in Ankawa, a
Christian suburb of the Kurdish capital Erbil, east of Mosul.
The
parents said they now hoped to emigrate, to put their ordeal behind them.
In
the meantime, they face a long wait in the cramped cabin, because their home in
Qaraqosh was almost completely destroyed in the fighting to dislodge the
militants.
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