Monday February 10, 2025

German FM visits sites of IS atrocities in north Iraq

Published : 10 Mar 2023, 02:48

DF News Desk

Annalena Baerbock (r), Foreign Minister, lays flowers at the Kocho cemetery next to Naif Jasim, the tribal leader and representative of the victims' families. During her trip, Baerbock visits the northern Iraqi city of Sinjar, the main settlement area for the Yazidis. Photo: Michael Kappeler/dpa.

German Foreign Minister Annelana Baerbock on Thursday visited sites of atrocities committed by the Islamic State terrorist group in the Sinjar region in north-western Iraq near the Syrian border, reported dpa.

The Islamist extremists murdered over 5,000 members of the Yezidi community in 2014 when it conquered the region. Tens of thousands of people were killed, abducted or enslaved.

The Islamic State once controlled large areas in Iraq and Syria. Since 2017, the group has been considered to be defeated militarily, but isolated cells continue to carry out deadly attacks.

The United Nations and the German parliament have condemned the terrorist militia's crimes as genocide.

An estimated 210,000 Yezidis are internally displaced. Germany is meanwhile home to the world's largest Yezidi diaspora, with up to 200,000 people.

It is not considered safe for Yezidis to return to their home communities in Iraq and this is one of the main reasons why few people have returned.

Only a third of the Yezidis who fled Islamic State have returned. The German government says it wants to help stabilize the region by supporting reconstruction and clearing the region of unexploded landmines.