FBR Report: Women Held Captive as ISIS Attacks

3 November 2015
Sinjar Mountain, Kurdistan, Iraq

 

“When we get Sinjar back from ISIS it will mean nothing if our children are dead there”
– Yazidi mother
Yizidi girl who escaped ISIS

Thanks so much, dear team, for your prayers, love and support. We are separated by space, time and terrain but not spirit. We are here on a relief mission in Sinjar Mountain, Kurdistan, where ISIS attacks have intensified. We are giving medical, dental and spiritual care and trying to put a light on the situation. After this mission we go back into Burma for missions there.

Last night we were with the IDPS and talked with Heva, a Yazidi girl who was captured by ISIS along with over 1,000 other girls and women at Sinjar. Her story of rapes, beatings and the suicides of Yazidi girls was heart-breaking. She managed to escape and find her family on Sinjar Mountain. Her brother Amir is still missing and presumed dead. He was captured with her and she said all the older boys and men were separated right away, many were killed, others taken away to Syria to work as slaves. In spite of all she has suffered her spirit was not crushed and she had a radiance about her that humbled and inspired us.

ISIS positions close to us in Sinjar
Yizidi girl wanting to go home

After she told her story, her mother interjected into our conversation and said, “When we get Sinjar back it will mean nothing if our children are dead there. There are still many girls held as sex slaves in Sinjar and if the attempt to retake the city is not done right or fails, they will die. If that happens it is the worse thing for us. Please help us find a way.” We prayed with Heva and her father and mother: for healing for Heva, for the girls in captivity and for the release and life of their son, Amir. In the IDP site we also met a boy who lost his hand to an exploding shell, one of the thousands of traumatized children here.

Boy who lost his hand to a exploding shell

We have spent most of our time at the front line at the bottom of the mountain in Sinjar town, and the shooting and shelling have increased. Today Joseph, our Karen FBR medic, treated a Kurdish soldier who had been hit by a mortar. We are in the right place we believe. We were given the Jesus film in Kurdish by some of our Christian friends in Erbil and we are handing them out to Yazidis and Kurds at the front lines. We have a close relationship with all here – Muslim and Yazidi – and pray together with what I feel is a mutual deep need of God’s help. There is also a need for unity here among the many different factions and nationalities fighting ISIS.

FBR medic Joseph treating mortar victim
ISIS resupply trucks outside Sinjar on the way to Syria

Thank you for praying for the people here and for all of your help. We pray and work with the desire that the women, girls and all in captivity will be freed, that ISIS will be defeated and all hearts will change to love.

God bless you,

Dave, family and all of FBR

Kurd commander, Pete, Jiri and Dave
Dr. Shannon fills teeth
FBR Medic Joseph give tourniquet training