Teen sisters reunite after IS kidnap

Islamic State militants 'gifted' one girl to their fighters, sold the other at market for $1,500

Adeba Shaker, a 14-year-old from Iraq's minority Yazidi sect, recalled the day when she smiled again for the first time since her abduction by Islamic State militants.

It was Oct 28, when she was reunited with her younger sister who had also been kidnapped and sold in a market.

Shaker and 13-year-old Chenar found each other at a camp for internally displaced people just outside Dohuk, in northern Iraq, where Chenar came after being freed by a Sunni Muslim family who paid to save her from Islamist fighters.

"I can't describe how I felt, I was so happy," Shaker told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at the camp. "Now we need to find everybody else."

Sixteen of Shaker's relatives are still being held by IS fighters who control large swathes of Iraq and Syria. They were abducted from their village in the Yazidi heartland of Sinjar in northwestern Iraq, and separated.

IS has hounded ethnic and religious minorities in northern Iraq since seizing the city of Mosul in June, killing and displacing thousands of Christians, Shiite Shabaks and Turkmen who lived for centuries in one of the most diverse parts of the Middle East.

Hundreds of Yazidi women and girls have been captured, raped and tortured, and forced to convert to Islamand marry IS followers, according to rights groups.

Shaker was trafficked to the Syrian border and was given as a "gift" to fighters on the front line. She was converted to Islam and forcibly married to one of them.

Young Chenar was sold at the local market. Just hours before the bidding started, a Sunni man noticed her. "He said I was too young," Chenar said.

He paid $1,500 for her and took her to his home. "As soon as I stepped in the house, he allowed me to call my family." Although she was told she would be released, the man told her to be patient.

"The Daesh (an Arabic acronym used for the Islamist group) were watching all our moves, it was a very dangerous situation for everybody," she said.

Chenar was held in the man's house for 55 days. "I wasn't asked to do anything in the house. I would just eat and sleep. They were kind to me, although I was not permitted to go out."

The sisters told their story while sitting in their tent in the Shariya refugee camp that opened in mid November and where they live with two brothers, two cousins and an uncle.

"We know other members of our family are still alive, some of them called us, but they have not been able to escape," said Sal, one of the brothers.

The Yazidi are a religious sect whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions. Tens of thousands have fled IS fighters, who say the Yazidi must embrace their radical version of Islamor die.

Harsh life

Shaker took her chance to escape from a house in Raabia, Iraq, in late August when her IS captors received a phone call and stormed out. She ran toward the Syrian border and to safety with Kurdish fighters.

She is now focused on finding her mother and sisters and leaving Iraq for good. "Nowhere is safe here for us," she said. "I want to go away. I want to go to America."

In the meantime, the family faces harsh, wintry conditions in the camp, where water seeps into tents when it rains. And fear remains.

Some of the nearly 3,000 families sheltering at Shariya are Sunni, the branch of Islam followed by IS, and Shaker, like many others, fears further violence.