Hareth Najem fled Islamic State's last enclave in eastern Syria wounded and...
DEIR AL-ZOR PROVINCE, Syria - Hareth Najem fled Islamic State’s last enclave in eastern Syria wounded and alone. The Iraqi orphan’s family had died two years earlier in air strikes across the border in al-Qaim region.
Lying in a cattle truck beside another injured boy at a desert transit point for U.S.-backed forces, he huddled under a blanket. His face was covered in dirt and the side of his head wrapped with bandages covering wounds incurred days earlier. Some of the children are foreigners whose parents brought them to be raised under IS rule, or child fighters conscripted into what the group dubbed “cubs of the caliphate”. Others, including members of the Yazidi minority, were enslaved by the jihadists.
Hareth said his family had been running a market stall when IS overran their town and they had no links to the group. “They gave speeches at the mosques, jihad and whatnot,” he said. “I was scared of them. My whole family died because of them.”
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