Yazidi children freed from IS haunted by health crisis, says Amnesty

Nearly 2,000 Yazidi children freed from the grip of the Islamic State group in recent years are still trapped by psychological and physical trauma, Amnesty International warned on Thursday.

The Yazidis are an ethno-religious minority numbering around 550,000 in their heartland of northwest Iraq before IS swept through the rugged region in 2014.

Slamming the Yazidis as heretics, IS slaughtered thousands of men, abducted women and girls and forced boys to fight on its behalf.

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Yazidi children were forcibly converted to Islam and taught Arabic, banned from speaking their native Kurdish.

To this day, child survivors suffer "debilitating long-term injuries," as well as post-traumatic stress disorder, mood swings, aggression and flashbacks.

The rights group found that 1,992 children who faced torture, forced conscription, rape and other abuses at the hands of IS were not getting the care they need.

Amnesty said access to education could help ease children back into society, but tens of thousands of Yazidis still live in displacement camps where schooling is irregular.

Many have also gone into debt from paying thousands of US dollars to smugglers to free Yazidi relatives who were held by IS.

Yazidi mothers forcibly wed to IS fighters are struggling to heal their own psychological scars, while dealing with the stigma of having children born to jihadist fathers.

Many Yazidi women who were rescued from IS' last bastion in Syria over the last two years were forced to leave their IS-born children behind when they returned to their families in neighbouring Iraq.

Mothers must be reunited with their children and no further separation should take place, Amnesty said.