Text and photography by Diego Ibarra Sánchez /MeMo
On the outskirts of Sinjar, Iraq, the early morning rays against the horizon draw a map of desolation through the devastated streets of the city. A river of destruction escorts the punished arteries of a town razed by war. Abandoned and demolished buildings, empty shops, destroyed schools and decomposed corpses lie as witnesses muzzled by the horror.
In August 2014, the Islamic State group attacked Sinjar Valley and its towns in the province of Nineveh in northern Iraq, and once the city was taken, a legacy of death, kidnapping and slavery was left behind. Selectively, members of the Islamic State group ransacked and vandalized the properties of the Yazidi, and planted and hid in their wake hundreds of explosive devices. The streets have turned into an ocean of rubble, and now the only souls roaming around the deserted streets are the peshmerga.
A path of soil, with the margins covered by a robe of poppies and other wildflowers, leads us to five big mounds of earth now surrounded by a metallic fence. A sign in Arabic warns: "Respect the fence. Victims have the right to rest in peace." The silence that permeates this improvised cemetery is interrupted by the buzz of mortars, which reverberates just a kilometer from the front lines of the battle against the Islamic State group.
A row of clothes worn by time serves as a makeshift altar for several skulls and bones. Men's jackets, women's velvet robes, cigarettes and tiny sandals summon the last breaths of hundreds of lives ended in the name of the Islamic State group delirium. (Read More...)
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