Yazidi mother reveals how daughter clung to her husband's headless body

Home Top

'The more people you kill, the more you're in the limelight': College gunman, 26, was 'filled with hate,' lived with his mother and asked if his victims were Christian in rampage that left at least ten dead
'He told Christians they would meet God in one second - then shot them': Harrowing survival story of student who played dead as her classmates were made to stand up and shot around her
The hero Army veteran who was shot five times as he 'charged at Oregon college shooter'
Sheriff praises two hero cops who ran straight in to college without back-up and killed gunman - as dramatic 911 audio captures their calls for help
FBI investigating if Oregon shooter posted warning message online hours before massacre and said: 'Don't go to school tomorrow if you are in the northwest'
I saw my teacher shot in the head: Traumatized survivors tell of 'utter panic' during college shooting as heroic teachers evacuated students and others hid inside their classrooms
'Our thoughts and prayers are not enough': Obama calls for tougher gun laws in his FIFTEENTH speech as a President mourning a mass shooting
'People like him have nothing to live for': Gunman praised Vester Flanagan, shared a Sandy Hook documentary online before spree, and was looking for love on the web
Mourners sing Amazing Grace at candlelight vigil held for the ten victims of the Oregon college shooting
Oregon college gunman was armed with an assault rifle and THREE pistols that he could have bought legally
'Get this over with': serial killer who claimed to be mentally disabled executed in Virginia
$Train Hero Discusses UCC Shooting\nBy ellentube team · 4 hours ago\nEllen talked to an international hero on a somber and surprising day.$ Train hero Alek Skarlatos is a student at mass shooting college and ran out of DWTS rehearsals in panic to check his friends were OK
'Here's the first bite of my churro; here's the second!' The hilarious moment baseball announcers turn their commentary to sorority sisters taking selfies at the game
BREAKING NEWS: Passenger plane carrying 10 people goes off radar in Indonesia
Twelve dead in U.S. military transport plane crash in Afghanistan
Airport evacuated over wedding favors marked with couple's initials 'TNT'
It's the trendiest food around, but are you throwing out the healthiest part? Avocado SEED makes up 70% of its nutritional benefits - if you know how to eat it
Jim Carrey reportedly meets with sister of late girlfriend Cathriona White at the house where her body was found in a suspected suicide
Your early 20s really ARE your happiest years: Misery plagues middle-age as money and job worries take over (but the good news is life gets better at 65)
The man who owned Google.com for a minute: Sanmay Ved purchased domain for $12 before firm discovered its mistake
The REAL Jesse James and his killer Robert Ford: Photograph owned by family who kept outlaw safe in 1870s verified by experts
'Why aren't I Sir Michael?': Jacko was desperate to receive a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth, claims his former bodyguard
Adopted son of wealthy couple who tortured and killed SEVEN DOGS sentenced to up to 28 years in prison
How your HEIGHT could predict your risk of cancer: Chance of developing the disease jumps a THIRD for every extra four inches

Mother tells of harrowing moment she pulled her sobbing nine-year-old daughter off the decapitated corpse of her father
The family rounded up in ISIS raids on Yazidi towns on Mount Sinjar, Iraq
Her husband's head destroyed and covered in blood by jihadi sniper rifle
His widow hasn't seen her eldest daughter since she was kidnapped and taken to be a sex slave over a year ago

By Owen Holdaway In Dohuk, Iraq For Mailonline

Published: 04:12 EST, 30 September 2015 | Updated: 09:11 EST, 30 September 2015

195

View
comments

A Yazidi mother has relived the harrowing moment her nine-year-old daughter clung to her father's headless corpse after he had been executed by an ISIS sniper.

'When ISIS was killing everyone, I went to see my husband. He was just covered in blood and I saw that his head was separated from his body,' said Hayar, 33, from her tent in Khanke refugee camp, Northern Iraq.

'His head was destroyed. My daughter, Shilan, who is nine, fell down on her father's body and I could not pull her off.

Scroll down for video

Poignant: When nine-year-old Shilan's father was decapitated by an ISIS sniper's rifle, the young girl was found clinging on to his body. Sobbing she had to be prized away from his corpse by her mother

'She was shocked, she could not breathe properly for two hours. The killing, she [still] remembers,' the mother said as her child wiped another tear from her eyes.

Shilan, sat patiently beside her grieving mother and broke down as she recounted what happened.

The senseless and barbaric murder of her father, Qassem, happened after the family were captured together with more than 50 other Yazidis in the ISIS attacks on the Tel-Azer complex, south of Sinjar Mountain on August 3 last year.

When ISIS was killing everyone, I went to see my husband. He was covered in blood and his head was separated from his body

Qassem's widow, Hayar, 33

'We drove to this field where there were many other families. ISIS arrested everybody there. They separated out the women and children and the men were put into another room,' his widow Hayar recounted.

She also revealed how that was the last time she saw her 16-year-old daughter, who was one of 24 'beautiful' girls that day, taken away to become jihadi sex slaves.

'It has been a year and almost two months, and I have heard nothing about my daughter.' she said.

Brutal murders, sexual violence, rape and gender inequality have become the unbearable reality of Yazidi life at the hands of ISIS in northern Iraq and it is indelibly imprinting horror in the young minds of a generation of children in Syria and Iraq.

See more breaking Islamic State news and the latest on the Syrian war

Recovering: The Yazidi family looked on in horror as ISIS militants rounded them up and separated the men and women into two lines. Many of the men who refused to convert to Islam were executed

Painful: Hayar's nine-year-old daughter Shilan is struggling to get over the trauma of seeing her father decapitated by an ISIS sniper rifle

Anxious: Haray, a mother of four, won't let her two youngest children, daughters aged five and nine out of her sight. She is anxiously waiting for her daughter, taken as a sex slave, who she fears is dead

Reliving that day that changed her life forever, she recalls how, the fanatics tried to convert the Yazidis and recruit their sons to their holy war.

'After they took the girls, they told the men, you must be Muslims. Most of the men refused,' she explained, adding, 'They tried to run away.'

When they tried to escape militants began their killing spree, using swords, sniper rifles and AK47s.

'One younger ISIS man wanted to kill the kids [and me], but another ISIS man, who was responsible for the killing, said you can only kill men, you cannot kill kids,' her son, Arkad, 15, explained as he sat quietly in the corner of their tent.

During the bloody massacre, some ISIS fighters began to behead their victims.

'I saw another ISIS fighter, who was in the field, beheading [a bearded] Yazidi with a sword,' Arkad said.

Once the killing had stopped the rest of the family, who were housed in a small building next to the field, got out.

Outside, among the ten or so deformed bodies on the ground was their father.

Suffering: A UN report into Yazidis' plight calls their treatment at the hands of ISIS 'crimes against humanity'. Around 3.1million are homeless since 'widespread' attacks on Mount Sinjar, northern Iraq, in August last year

Segregation: In the raids on Yazidi communities by ISIS fighters in August last year men were split into separate lines to women and children. Most of the men were taken to killing fields and executed in pits

Desperate: Yazidi families who lived in Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq are in urgent need of help after being made homeless by attacks in the region in August last year

His head had been blow completely off after being riddled with sniper and AK47 bullets.

'I barely recognized him because he was so deformed. His head was separated from his body,' she said.

'There was so much blood, his head had been blown off by sniper rifle.'

Amid the chaos, her eldest son, Farhad, 17, who had been taken outside, but spared by ISIS, had run away towards the mountain.

As Hayar searched for her son, her remaining family stayed with their father's body.

'When I got back [to the field] I saw my [other] daughter. She was crying telling me that her [nine-year-old] sister had collapsed on her father's dead body,' she said.

She tried to drag her daughter off her husband's body.

'She [her daughter] was grasping him and she was covered in his blood [and] my daughter had gathered his teeth that had been sprayed by the sniper fire,' she said.

Shilan, who grasps her head when her mother explains the condition she was in at the time of her father's murder, is unable to speak about the incident.

'Look she is living in trauma,' Hayar said pointing to her distract daughter, adding, 'Nobody can help us, as we are without any man.'

After the killing the jihadists left, but not before 'shelling' the remaining Yazidis.

'ISIS also shot a mortar at us when they left. But it did not explode,' she said.

Fearing ISIS would return, the family fled to Sinjar Mountain.

'We spent around 12 days on the mountain. After nine days I heard that my eldest son was alive,' Hayar recounted.

Haunted: The family, including Haray's youngest daughter, five, waited with their father's dead body while their mother went in search for her eldest son, 17, who fled in the chaos to Mount Sinjar, northern Iraq

Misery: The family are living in a camp of displaced Yazidis as they desperately await news of Haray's 16-year-old daughter who was one of 24 'beautiful' girls kidnapped to be a jihadi sex slave

Reunited with her eldest son, the family escaped, with the help of the Kurdish forces, towards the Syrian border, before heading to the relative safety of Iraqi Kurdistan.

'My daughter brought her father's teeth to Kurdistan. [And] we buried them near the Syrian border,' she said.

Shilan, who wanted to be a lawyer before her father was killed, has now lost that ambition.

'I don't like school [now] I hate anything that is in Arabic,' she said, adding I do not 'want to be here, and I just want our girls out of captivity.'

The mother also wants to take the rest of her family outside Iraq, however, she is still clinging to the hope that she can her get her eldest daughter back.

'I don't know anything about my other daughter, [but] some people have told me she has killed herself.'