Yazidi girl who escaped ISIS captivity dies of acute heart failure

Shahd Khodr Mirza, a Yazidi girl who hails from the town of Tal Banat in Iraq, passed away on Tuesday at 16 years old after being under ISIS captivity for three years.

Shahd died at a hospital in Dahuk in Iraq’s Kurdistan after suffering from acute heart failure which may have resulted from the physical and psychological torture she suffered while being held by ISIS.

Farida Fleit, who works at the NGO Yazda which supports Yazidi minorities, told Al Arabiya that Shahd was continually raped by several ISIS members during her years of captivity.

الفتاة الإيزيدية شهد

Quoting Shahd’s 12-year-old brother, Farida said Shahd and her brother, Shaher, were kidnapped in front of their school in Talafar in 2014 by an Iraqi man.

After the man raped and tortured her, Shahd was then “sold” in Syria to an ISIS member named Abu Khalil al-Baghdad. Shaher was separated from his sister and taken to an ISIS camp in Syria.

Shahed and her brother escaped when the man who had bought Shahd, Abu Khalil, was moving them to another area in Syria. During their journey, they passed by a location controlled by Kurdish units where Shaher told Kurdish fighters that Abu Khalil was an ISIS member.

The siblings were then taken to Iraq where they reached the town of Khan Sour on January 5. Shahd was immediately transferred to hospital according to Fleit who was with her three days prior to her death.

The fate of her father, four brothers and two sisters remains unknown as ISIS also kidnapped them on the same day she was abducted.

Shaher is now with his mother and uncle and lives with the hope of learning anything about his father and siblings.