ERBIL: A six-year old Iraqi Christian girl, kidnapped by IS when she was three, was reunited with her family on Friday, and getting used to saying “mum” and “dad” once more.
“The best day of my life is the day when Christina came back,” said her mother, Aida Nuh, on Saturday.
Dark circles around her eyes are evidence of sleepless nights since August 2014, when the militants snatched Christina from her, a few weeks after overrunning the town of Qaraqosh, 15 km southeast of Mosul.
“She stayed three years with the terrorists. Of course she forgot who her mother is, who her father is, that we are her family, but she will learn again.”
The militants took away Christina from the minibus which had driven them to the edge of IS territory, after threatening Aida, who desperately resisted.
The family’s efforts to track her through Arab friends were rewarded on Friday, when they got a call telling them Christina had been found in Hayy al Tanak, a poor neighbourhood of Mosul.
Eighth months into the US-backed offensive to take back Mosul, all of the city has fallen to Iraqi government forces except a pocket by the western bank of the Tigris River.
“We went to a dirty place in Hayy al Tanak (..), we took the child,” said Christina’s blind father, Khader Touma, wearing dark glasses and surrounded by the family now complete with the return of his youngest daughter.
Her two sisters and two brothers had escaped to Kurdish territory before the arrival of the militants. “I’m with mum and dad,” said Christina.
— Reuters
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
