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Yazidi Spiritual Leaders Say Children of ISIS Rape Won’t Be Accepted

RODI SAID/REUTERS
RODI SAID/REUTERS
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Yazidi Spiritual Leaders Say Children of ISIS Rape Won’t Be Accepted

RODI SAID/REUTERS
RODI SAID/REUTERS

The Yazidi Supreme Spiritual Council said children born to Yazidi mothers raped by ISIS militants will not be accepted into the Yazidi faith.

The council had said earlier that all Yazidis would be accepted back considering "what happened to them outside of their will." It also sent a delegation to Syria to look for Yazidis who had escaped ISIS.

However, the council released a statement clarifying its previous comments saying: “About the decision to accept the female survivors and children, we did not mean the children born as a result of rape at all, but those who were born from Yazidi parents and were kidnapped during the invasion of Sinjar by ISIS.”

ISIS slaughtered thousands of Yazidis and buried them in mass graves during its Iraq and Syria invasion in 2014. Women were abducted and sold into sexual slavery.

Yazidis do not accept children within their community unless they are born to Yazidi parents.

There are no reliable figures for the number of Yazidi children or for the number of unregistered children in the Iraqi departments since 2014.

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Israeli Strikes Kill 12 in Lebanon, including 5 Hezbollah Fighters

Women walk near destroyed buildings, with one holding the flag of Hezbollah, in the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Kila, after an Israeli military spokesperson said that Israel would keep troops in several posts in southern Lebanon past the deadline for them to withdraw, February 18, 2025 - Reuters reported.
Women walk near destroyed buildings, with one holding the flag of Hezbollah, in the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Kila, after an Israeli military spokesperson said that Israel would keep troops in several posts in southern Lebanon past the deadline for them to withdraw, February 18, 2025 - Reuters reported.
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Israeli Strikes Kill 12 in Lebanon, including 5 Hezbollah Fighters

Women walk near destroyed buildings, with one holding the flag of Hezbollah, in the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Kila, after an Israeli military spokesperson said that Israel would keep troops in several posts in southern Lebanon past the deadline for them to withdraw, February 18, 2025 - Reuters reported.
Women walk near destroyed buildings, with one holding the flag of Hezbollah, in the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Kila, after an Israeli military spokesperson said that Israel would keep troops in several posts in southern Lebanon past the deadline for them to withdraw, February 18, 2025 - Reuters reported.

Heavy Israeli airstrikes killed 12 people, including five Hezbollah fighters, in eastern Lebanon on Tuesday, a security source in Lebanon said, in what Israel said was a warning to the Iran-backed group against trying to re-establish itself.

The Israeli military said the airstrikes targeted training camps used by elite Hezbollah fighters and warehouses it used to store weapons in the Bekaa Valley region of eastern Lebanon.

The airstrikes were the deadliest on the area since a US-brokered ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel last November. Bachir Khodr, governor of the Bekaa region, said seven of the dead were Syrian nationals.

Israel dealt Hezbollah heavy blows in last year's conflict, killing its leader Hassan Nasrallah along with other commanders and destroying much of its arsenal.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Tuesday's strikes sent a "clear message" to Hezbollah, accusing it of planning to rebuild the capability to raid Israel through the elite Radwan force, Reuters reported.

Israel "will respond with maximum force to any attempt at rebuilding", he said. He added that strikes were also a message to the Lebanese government, saying it was responsible for upholding the ceasefire agreement.

There was no immediate public response from Hezbollah or from the Lebanese government to the latest Israeli strikes.

The United States has submitted a proposal to the Lebanese government aimed at securing Hezbollah's disarmament within four months in exchange for Israel halting airstrikes and withdrawing troops from positions they still hold in south Lebanon.

Under the terms of the ceasefire brokered by the US and France, Lebanon's armed forces were to confiscate "all unauthorized arms", beginning in the area south of the Litani River - the zone closest to Israel.