Wednesday, 10 February, 2021 - 05:30
Thikran Kamiran Yousif, 22, visits his father s grave in Kojo, Iraq February 7, 2021. REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani Kojo (Iraq) - Asharq Al-Awsat
Thikran Kamiran Yousif was 15 when ISIS militants surrounded his village in northern Iraq, rounded up residents and slaughtered several hundred of them, including his father, brother, grandfather and aunt.
Nearly seven years later, Yousif has returned to the village of Kojo in Sinjar district for the reburial of his father and 103 other Yazidis whose bodies had been dumped by ISIS in mass graves and have now been identified by DNA samples.
Yousif, now 22 and living in Germany, is still haunted by the massacre of August 2014.
Yazidis slain by Islamic State seven years ago finally buried in Iraq
Mourners carry remains of people from the minority Yazidi sect, who were killed by Islamic State militants, after they were exhumed from a mass grave, to re-bury them in Kojo, Iraq February 6, 2021. In August 2014, Islamic State fighters surrounded.more Reuters / Saturday, February 06, 2021 Mourners carry remains of people from the minority Yazidi sect, who were killed by Islamic State militants, after they were exhumed from a mass grave, to re-bury them in Kojo, Iraq February 6, 2021. In August 2014, Islamic State fighters surrounded the village of Kojo in Sinjar district, northern Iraq, rounded up Yazidi residents and slaughtered several hundred of them.