'Dead or alive': Iraq's Yazidis await ISIS-abducted relatives - in pictures

More than 2,700 remain missing after abductions by extremists. Three people share their experiences

In this picture taken on April 22, 2023, Fawziya Jasim, a 16-year-old displaced Iraqi teenager from the Yazidi community, poses for a picture with her family members (not pictured) during an interview at the Sharya camp, some 15 kilometres near the northern Iraqi city of Dohuk. - In August 2014, Islamic State (IS) fighters swept over Mount Sinjar, the Kurdish-speaking minority's historic home in northern Iraq, massacring thousands of Yazidi men, enlisting children, and seizing thousands of women -- to be sold as jihadists' "wives" or reduced to sexual slavery. More than 2,700 Yazidis remain missing after the abductions abducted by the jihadists, whom they considered as heretics. (Photo by SAFIN HAMED / AFP)

Hayam, pictured, was 17 when ISIS abducted her on August 3, 2014, along with her parents, five sisters and two brothers

In an ISIS prison, she met Leila, a fellow Yazidi. In May 2015, Hayam was sold to a Syrian and Leila to an Iraqi

Four months later, Hayam was given to a man from Dagestan before escaping and reaching Iraqi Kurdistan after a year and a half in captivity

She has since married Leila's brother, Marwan, and the couple and their two children have sought asylum in Australia where Hayam has family

She has the word 'huriya' (freedom) tattooed on her wrist and has no intention of returning to her former home, with her family and friends no longer there

After paying nearly $100,000 in ransoms to free 10 family members, Khaled Taalou, a member of Iraq's Yazidi minority, is still working to free other relatives kidnapped by ISIS

Nineteen members of Mr Taalou's family were abducted, including his brother and sister and their spouses and children

Now displaced and living in Iraqi Kurdistan, Mr Taalou said expensive releases are negotiated 'via networks of traffickers in Iraq and abroad'

Bahar Elias was separated from her husband Jassem and their son Ahmed, who was just 19 when they were kidnapped

Relatives paid intermediaries $22,000 to secure the release of Bahar and her three younger sisters

Now in a camp for displaced people, the 40-year-old said she has her 'eyes glued to the road' in the hope that her husband and son will return

She appealed for international assistance to 'help us find a trace of our families, to find out if they are dead or alive'

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