Agony of Yazidi women torn between IS kids, or return home

Freed after years in jihadist captivity, Jihan faced an agonising ultimatum: abandon her three small children fathered by an Islamic State fighter or risk being shunned by her community.

"Of course I couldn't bring them home. They're Daesh (IS) children," said Jihan Qassem matter-of-factly, sitting in a sparse concrete structure she now calls home.

"How could I, when my three siblings are still in IS hands?," she added, highlighting the harsh reality that the children serve as constant reminders of the brutalities inflicted on the closed, tight-knit Yazidi community by the so-called Islamic State group.

Dozens of Yazidi women and girls systematically raped, sold and married off to jihadists after being abducted by IS from their ancestral Iraqi home of Sinjar in 2014 have faced the same gut-wrenching dilemma.

What to do about the children born of these forced unions? Now freed, the women are desperate to heal from the wounds inflicted on the conservative minority -- but raising ...