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This Man Has Freed Hundreds Of Yazidis Captured By ISIS. Thousands Remain Missing

His phone rarely stops ringing. Most calls and messages are from other Yazidis in Iraq's Kurdistan region, asking for help to find their relatives. Others are from people threatening to kill him.
A Yazidi tomb in a village in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Many families were displaced when ISIS killed hundreds of men and kidnapped thousands of women and children. More than 3,000 Yazidis are still missing.

Abdullah Shrim's phone almost never stops ringing. Most of the calls and messages are from other Yazidis asking for help to find their relatives. Others are from people threatening to kill him.

Shrim, a gregarious man with a ready smile, so far has rescued 338 members of the Yazidi religious group held captive by ISIS — almost all of them from Syria. It's a long way from his background as a beekeeper and businessman.

"I didn't think for a moment that I could be involved in the rescue field, to save someone," says Shrim, 43, at his home in a village near the city of Dohuk in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

ISIS roared into Yazidi towns near Mount Sinjar, in northern Iraq, in June 2014, on a mission to exterminate people who the militants considered unbelievers.

The Yazidis, an

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