Kurdish Boy Found Disabled, Alone On Mount Sinjar Passed Away

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Terrifying stories about the plight of the people in Kurdistan and Iraq fleeing the terrorist group Islamic State are shaking the world and has forced the international community to take immediate action to relieve their suffering. The United Nations has called it “a humanitarian tragedy.”

The Islamic State shows no mercy in its aim to create a caliphate that goes beyond borders. The militants have forced thousands to flee their homes and caused hundreds of deaths either by leaving civilians to die in the mountains due to high temperatures and lack of food and water or by killing them directly.

The Telegraph reports that a total of 1.5 million people have been displaced by the fighting.

Most of the refugees are Yezidi people with Kurdish ethnicity, perceived by extremist Muslims including the Islamic State as apostates. Islamic State has threatened Yezidis to either convert to Islam or be killed.

Around August 16, Kurdish fighters found a little boy lying on his back, alone on Mount Sinjar near the border with Syria after thousand of Yezidi residents fled the area because of the threat posed by the Islamic State, indiscriminate and brutal in its attacks on civilians

The Kurdish fighters brought the little boy to a hospital in Qamişlo, Rojava, the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Syria.

Severe damage was inflicted on the boy’s eyes and doctors believe it happened due to the boy being left on his back in 50 degrees Celsius weather with the Sun shining directly onto his eyes for more than a day. He was paralysed down one side of his body and therefore unable to move out of the Sun and into the shade.

Dr Josef Shokri told The Telegraph:

He was in a coma. We could only tell he was alive because of a faint heartbeat.

He has ulcers in his eyes and they have become infected.

He lay with his eyes open, without blinking for 24 hours. His cornea is white, making him almost blind… He is more stable now, eating water and food. But we have nowhere for him to go.

BBC journalist Gabriel Gatehouse recently spoke with the father of the little boy who said the boy’s name was Aziz and that he was 4 years old. The father, Jalal Badr Piso, had been made aware of his son by relatives who had seen Aziz’ picture on Facebook. When he learned that Aziz was at a hospital in Rojava, he left the refugee camp to go to Aziz. Unfortunately, he was too late. Aziz passed away on the morning of his father’s arrival.

BBC spoke with Jalal Badr Piso after Aziz passed away.

As the Yezidis fled in their thousands, police man Jalal Badr Piso was struggling. He and his wife had with them three kids too young to walk. With fighters from the Islamic State at their backs, they were forced to make an almost impossible decision to leave their 4-year-old son, Aziz, and save the others.

[Jalal Badr Piso]:“There was a hut by the side of the road. We put him in there and left him. We could not carry him anymore. He was too heavy.”

[BBC journalist]: “It must have been a very difficult decision to make to leave one of your children behind as you fled.”

[Jalal Badr Piso, crying]: “Of course it was difficult. We just could not cope.”

A doctor with The International Rescue Committe said that Aziz died in the early hours of Thursday morning [August 28].

The time spent on the mountain had caused a swelling of his brain, the doctor added.

He had needed specialist treatment, which was not available at the hospital in the northern Syrian town of Qamishli.