(9 Jul 2021) LEAD IN:
In Iraq, internally displaced Yazidis are struggling to cope with the scorching summer heat amid power cuts and water shortages.
STORY-LINE:
The hot summer sun bears down on the dry and dusty Sheikhan camp near Mosul, in Iraq's Nineveh governorate.
The internally displaced Yazidis living in the camp are grappling with the sweltering heat amid power cuts and water shortages.
"The problem is (the lack of) electricity. We live in miserable conditions, it can't be worse than this," says Hazel Semo, a displaced Yazidi woman.
Most of the Yazidis have been living in this camp for several years but Semo says the conditions are unbearable.
"Who can live under these nylon (tents) apart from us? I swear no-one can live here," she adds.
Temperatures have been soaring well above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) outside, baking the camp.
The camp hosts over 630 families or some 3,170 individuals including Feryal Hussein, who is struggling to help her children cope with the intense heat.
"It is midday and my children can't sleep because of the heat," she says.
Yazidis have been living in displacement for nearly seven years now since Islamic State militants overran their areas in 2014.
The militants inflicted an almost medieval fate on the community.
Hundreds of Yazidi men and boys were massacred, tens of thousands fled their homes, and the militants took thousands of women and girls as sex slaves, viewing them as heretics worthy of subjugation and rape.
The women were distributed among IS fighters in Iraq and Syria and over the following years were traded and sold as chattel.
Earlier this year, the head of a U.N. team investigating atrocities in Iraq announced it has found "clear and compelling evidence" that Islamic State extremists committed genocide against the Yazidi minority in 2014.
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