Testimonies from Kocho: ISIS - Islamic style Common Robbers, rapists and murderers.

Testimonies from Kocho: ISIS - Islamic style Common Robbers, rapists and murderers.(Amnesty).

After two days of searching, I finally found some of the survivors of the Kocho attack, who had managed to escape from ISIS-controlled territory. They are injured, weary and terrified about the fate of their families. They told me that scores of their relatives and neighbours were killed and they have no news about their families and other villagers. They don’t know if their parents, children and siblings are dead or alive. 

Elias, a 59-year-old nurse, told me: 

“At 11-11.30 (on Friday 15 August) ISIS called all the residents to the secondary school, which has been their headquarters since they came to the village two weeks ago. There they asked that we hand over our money, our mobile phones, and for the women to hand over their jewellery. After about 15 minutes they brought vehicles and started to fill them up with men and boys. They pushed about 20 of us onto the back of a Kia pick-up vehicle and drove us about one kilometre east of the village. They got us off the vehicle by the pool and made us crouch on the ground in a tight cluster and one of them photographed us. I thought then they’d let us go after that, but they opened fire at us from behind us. I was hit in the left knee, but the bullet only grazed my knee.”

He showed me a bullet-sized hole in his trousers, by his injured knee.

“I let myself fall forward, as if I were dead, and I stayed there face down without moving. When the shooting stopped I kept still and after they left, I ran away. Five or six others were also alive and they also ran from the place. The rest were all killed. I know two of them, they were right next to me: Khider Matto Qasem, 28, and Ravo Mokri Salah, about 80 years old. I don’t know who the others were; I was too scared to look around, I couldn’t focus. I don’t know what happened to my family, my wife, my seven children, my son’s wife and their two children; I don’t know if they are dead or alive or where they are. I can’t contact anyone as they took our mobile phones.”

Khider, a 17-year-old student, told me that he was also part of the first group of men and youths who were bundled into vehicles and taken to the village’s outskirts to be shot.

“There was no order, they (ISIS) just filled up vehicles indiscriminately. Me and my cousin, Ghaleb Elias, were pushed into the same vehicle. We were next to each other as they lined us up on the ground. He was killed. He was the same age as me, and worked as daily labourer, mostly in construction. I have no news of what happened to my parents and my four brothers and six sisters. Did they kill them? Did they abduct them? I don’t know anything about them.”

Khider escaped with what looked like a superficial bullet wound to his back.

A third survivor, Khalaf, a 32-year-old father of three young children, told me:

“I was in the third group. Before me, they (ISIS) took away two other vehicles full of men and youth. We were driven a very short distance east, maybe 200 – 300 metres. There was nobody else where we were taken. We were 20 or 25 crammed in the back of the pick-up, I don’t know for sure. When we got there they made us stand in a row and then one of them shouted ‘God is Great’ [‘Allahu Akbar’] and then there was shooting. There were maybe 10 of them (ISIS) but they were behind us, I don’t know how many of them opened fire. I was hit twice, in the left hip and the left calf.

“After the shooting stopped I heard the vehicles leave and another man and I got up and ran. I went in one direction and he in the other. I don’t know where he is now. I don’t know where anyone is, my children, my family. Where are they? Have they taken them? How can I find them?… Among those killed near me was Amin Salah Qasem, the brother of the Elias [the nurse who survived the first group killing], and his son ‘Asem, aged 10-12, and seven others whose names I know and another 10 or 12 whose names I don’t know because I could not see properly. I was so terrified; I kept my head down and when it became quiet and I was sure they had left I just ran away.”

Hmmm....Sounds just like Nazi SS troops exterminating Jews during the War.Read the full story here.